Floodland
by notmanos
Summary: Post X2: After the revelations of STS, Logan decides he needs to pick a new direction for his life, even as he plans a strike on an Organization base with Scott. But Osiris launches a revenge on Jean that may change everything.
1. Part 1

Disclaimer: The character of Wolverine & the X Men is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his crew are all mine. Hands off. 

N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X2", and directly after "Strip the Soul".

* * *

FLOODLAND

* * *

1

At night, the halls of Xavier's school seemed longer, wider, an odd optical illusion that would fade as soon as the morning sun broke through, or the lights started coming on. That seemed to be true in all old buildings, or ones with high ceilings, even though Logan could see well enough in the dim light that the shadows all but disappeared.

Maybe it was just a feeling, a sense of vacancy, even though he could still smell traces of everyone here, and if he opened up his senses enough, he could probably hear many of them breathing behind the doors.

That's how he knew there was somebody in the sun room, even at this hour. They were quiet, but he could smell the reheated pizza they were eating, and beneath that their more usual scent. He wasn't going to stop in, just go straight to Saddiq's room, but ... oh, damn it. He still felt mildly responsible for her, even though he knew he wasn't.

He poked his head in the room, and said in low tones that wouldn't carry, "Scott is up, and if he finds you ... well, I don't know what the fuck he would do. Ground you and have a hissy fit or something."

"Logan!" Rogue exclaimed, surprised, and quickly slapped a hand over her mouth as if she'd shouted. She hadn't, but the mansion was so quiet that talking in conversational tones still seemed far too loud. She dropped the rest of her pizza slice on her plate, and tried again, lowering her voice to a whisper. "When did you get back?"

"Just now. I ain't stayin'. But you might wanna clear -"

"Why aren't you staying?"

"Got stuff to do. I was just warnin' ya, 'kay?"

He started to leave, but she stood up from the table, chair scraping against the floor. "You're up to something, aren't you? What's going on?"

He sighed, mentally cursing himself for coming in here. He should have just let Scott catch her and delay them because he had to chew her out for sneaking out. (Clearly she had just gotten in not too long ago - not only was she remarkably awake, but she was dressed like she had been out. Glitter still sparkled in her hair, and she smelled like a perfume that was oddly redolent of peaches. Or maybe that was just lotion or something; either way, it was all he could do not to sneeze.) "Nothin'. Go to bed."

"Bullshit." She made a show of thinking about it, of cocking her head to the side, and then said, "Scott's going with you, isn't he? This is about them, isn't it?"

Them? Giant ants? He wanted to say that, but didn't, as the reference would probably be lost on her. He thought about lying to her, as she could very well tell Xavier, but there were things she could have told Xavier that she hadn't. She might have been a teenage girl, but she could keep secrets. "We have some things that need taking care of, but Xavier can't know the truth, okay? He wouldn't like it."

"I want in."

That made him chuckle. "Oh hell no."

"C'mon! I can get information for you."

"And how would you do that?"

"Remember when I absorbed that guard at that place up in Canada, when we went back with Le - "She paused suddenly, cutting herself off, and he knew why: Leonie. He did feel a sick, sad twinge in his stomach at the thought, but didn't let it show on his face. "I got his memories, Logan, at least for a little while. If there's anyone there who knows anything about you, we don't have to ask - I can just take it from them."

He stared at her, aware she was telling the truth, but still unsure about this. "You could pull some really bad memories."

"Oh please, I absorbed you. Can it get much worse?"

Okay, point for her. "How's your control?"

"Better. I've learned to regulate it a bit, so I can pull a little instead of everything at once."

He nodded, figuring that was good for her, even if no one else. "What about your ability to fight?"

She grimaced, not quite rolling her eyes, but definitely looking away. "Well, okay, kinda piss poor there. But I could just borrow some of you again, if you didn't mind an' all."

"How would my mutation help you fight? Beyond healing up fast."

She looked back at him, surprised. "They didn't tell you?"

Nothing good ever came after a statement like that. "Tell me what?"

"After I absorbed you the last time, I basically became you for a little bit. Except I didn't get all that body hair, which was good ... no offense ..."

"Jean told me you were pissy, yeah."

She gave him a strangely patronizing smile. "Pissy? You could say that. I could also beat the smack ass out of everyone here. I had your ability to fight; I didn't even have to think about it, I could just do it, it was pure reflex. Guess I got it with your memories." She paused, her expression faltering. "I also seemed to get a taste for heavy metal and punk. I don't know what that's about, but I still have a Suicidal Tendencies CD."

"Which one?"

"Self-titled one."

"Cool, can I have it?"

She shrugged. "Sure, yeah. Can I come?"

"Not for a CD, no." He knew if he let her come along, he'd regret it. Sure, she could absorb some of him, and maybe she'd be okay, but still it wasn't a good idea. And Scott would absolutely plotz if he let her some along - look at how upset he was over Saddiq coming along. And that pretty much clinched the deal for Rogue. "You follow all my damn orders and give me no lip?"

She grinned broadly, showing perfect white teeth. "You're the boss."

"Remember that. Why don't you head outside before Scott sees you? Marc's parked beyond the front gate; just tell him you're a last minute addition."

She made a small noise of delight, and when he raised an eyebrow at that, she quickly adopted an insincere poker face. "Are you that bored here?" He wondered.

"To fucking tears," she admitted.

Somehow that didn't surprise him in the least.

Maybe it was in his mutation, but Saddiq was almost completely awake the minute he got out of bed. It didn't take long for him to get ready to go, and they were headed for the door within four minutes. He seemed a little disappointed Scott was coming along, and admitted to him, in Arabic (Logan was one of the few around here that could speak it, so it was almost a secret language between them), that he was afraid that Scott would hold them back. "We won't let him," he assured him in his native tongue. That seemed to mollify him somewhat. He also seemed pleased that Rogue was coming along, making him wonder if he had a crush on her.

Scott met them by the front door, scowling in distaste. "Xavier won't buy the note I left," he muttered sourly.

"Of course he won't. But hopefully he'll give us a day before comin' after us."

They were half way down the walk before Scott spoke again, this time to Saddiq. "Are you sure about this? This is dangerous."

"I was designed for danger," he replied, without irony.

"That doesn't mean you have to throw yourself into it."

"No. But if I can help and don't, I won't be able to live with myself."

That shut Scott up, and Logan had to look away so Scooter didn't catch his smirk. Saddiq was good.

The sun was coming up slowly somewhere far beyond the trees surrounding the grounds. The sky was a pale navy tinged with pink at the edges, and an oddly warm wind was kicking up from the southwest. They'd miss a thunderstorm, which was probably for the best.

Logan scented they weren't alone, heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel, so wasn't surprised when Srina materialized just abreast of him and Scott. Scott made a noise of shock and jumped, reaching up to his visor, but Logan quickly grabbed his arm.

She raised an eyebrow at Scott, then said, "You guys were takin' a while. I decided to make sure everything was okay."

"Yeah, we're good. Scott, Saddiq, this is Srina Adar, a friend of mine."

The use of the word "friend" made Srina smirk, her magenta eyes sparkling with knowing humor. "Is that what I am?"

"Play nice."

"So you're another invisible person?" Scott asked, his shock quickly morphing into annoyance.

"No! I don't turn invisible ... exactly ... you just can't see me."

"And the difference is..?"

"It's kind of a psychic power," Logan clarified, mainly so Srina didn't haul off and whap Scott on the back of his head. (Which would have been fine by him, but his visor might fly off, and no one needed that.) "She's always here, but your mind can't see her or anything she touches. It extends to machines as well, only in the sense that people have to look at the tapes and the sensors, and they can't find her either, even when the machine says differently."

Scott grunted what could have been an agreement or expression of interest, and Srina added, "Oh, and you can call me Nightshade."

That made Scooter look at her funny. "Nightshade?"

"What, you guys are the only one who can have swoopy nicknames?"

"Swoopy?"

"I don't have one," Saddiq pointed out.

"We'll have to think of one for you," Logan said, as they reached the open front gate, and he braced for the certain hissy fit.

"What's your power?" Srina asked.

"Impenetrable skin, and a certain degree of invulnerability."

"Hmm ... yeah, that is a toughie."

"All right, now we can get this party started," Marcus said as they came into view. He was leaning against the hood of his sleek black Corvette coupe, and sitting on the hood not three inches from him was Rogue.

Just like he expected, Scott stopped short, and said, "Oh no. She's not part of the deal."

Rogue pouted instantly, crossing her arms over her chest. "I can help."

"No no no -"

"Scott, listen," Logan said, grabbing his arm and pulling him aside. Scott yanked his arm away violently, and Logan just knew he was giving him the stink eye beneath his visor. He lowered his voice to a whisper, in hopes that Rogue wouldn't hear. "She's not gonna fight. She's just going to absorb the memories of these sons of bitches and find out what they know. That's all."

"Oh really?" He replied sarcastically. "Does she know that?"

"Hell no. You know what she's like."

"You?"

"Now there's no reason to insult her."

Scott frowned, and Logan figured he'd beaten him to the punch there. "She's a teenager, and, on top of that, one of the most rebellious ones we have. Do you know how hard it is to control her?"

"So don't control her. Give her a chance to do something, just ... limit her options without being obvious about it. Sometimes the more tightly you hold the reins, the more some things just wanna get loose. Believe me, I know."

"I'll keep an eye on her," Srina offered, and from the way Scott jumped again, Logan figured he hadn't seen her. Srina then winked at him, and he knew she had been deliberately startling the Boy Scout. See, how could you not love a woman like that? "I'm not going to fight, just do the stealthy stuff. She can come with me."

Logan watched Scott grind his teeth, the muscles in his jaw twitching as he did so, and knew he was just dying to ask why he should trust her, especially since Scott didn't know her, and she was a "friend" of his. But he was too polite to sneer this at a woman (Marcus? He'd have had no problem, and Marc would have shot him down easily anyways), and maybe being pretty and British doubly helped her. "Fine. Remember she's just a girl."

"Oh, don't worry about that. I used to be one myself." Although she grinned cheerily, Logan caught the sarcasm in it, and it was all he could do not to laugh. He did love this woman.

"Saracen," Saddiq said, apropos of nothing.

They all looked at him strangely, but Rogue asked first. "Huh?"

"As a nickname. Saracen. What do you think?"

"What does it mean?" Rogue wondered.

"It was a Muslim warrior who fought the Crusaders back in the day," Logan said, and only after saying it aloud did he realize that was true. Now how in the hell did he know that?

"There's some pretty ironic symbolism in there," Marc noted.

Scott scratched his head, and just the way his shoulders set, it was clear he wasn't thrilled about it. "Well," he began tentatively.

Logan didn't let him finish. "I like it." Saddiq gave him a small, grateful smile, aware that he had just cut off a negative comment.

"Me too," Rogue agreed, giving Saddiq a sly grin. Uh oh, was the crush mutual? Did Bobby know about this? No offense to the kid at all, but Saddiq was better looking, and had the whole "tall, dark, and handsome" thing going for him, as well as an accent - women loved accents. Maybe she was bored with more than just the school, and Logan suddenly wondered how much of him had rubbed off on her. She had nearly absorbed him to death; it was quite possible not all of his tendencies disappeared that easily.

Scott threw up his arms in surrender. "Fine with me if you want to call yourself that. Are we ready to go?"

"Yeah, but uno momento," Marc said, straightening up. "I'm not sure I can take everyone. Didn't count on one more body, and this is a 'Vette, not an SUV."

"Someone can come with me," Logan offered.

Rogue slid off the hood, and jumped down to the asphalt. "Whatcha got?"

Scott gave him a sidelong glance. "You have a car?"

"No, got my bike back."

"_Your_ bike?"

"Ooh!" Rogue exclaimed excitedly.

Scott flashed her a stern, hard look. "You are not riding on any motorcycle, and certainly not one with him driving."

Her pout came back again. "Oh come on! I can -"

"Sorry love, but the spot's taken," Srina said, putting her arm around Logan's waist and snuggling up beside him. He draped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a small squeeze, grateful that she was cutting off an argument before it could get started. For some reason, a sour look flashed across Rogue's face, and she turned away, clearly disappointed.

Marcus clapped his gloved hands together loudly, and said, "Okay, we're set. Rendezvous in the parking lot behind the Quik-Mart on Reinhold Street?" Logan nodded an affirmative. He'd dropped by Marc's place first, and they had used a combination of GPS locations and internet mapping places to get a breakdown of the Mirror Lake area. Technically, there wasn't an area at all; Mirror Lake wasn't a town or a village, just a lake, in an extremely remote part of the Killdeer Mountains, where the access road was still "under construction" after being wiped out by a mudslide. From the records Marc found, it had been under construction for the past five and a half years. There was a small town at the base of the Killdeers, a place called Harmon, which was where the Quik-Mart they chose as a rendezvous point was.

"Have you staked this place out?" It was hard to tell if Scott was annoyed or impressed. Possibly both.

"Just did our homework," Marc told him, going around to the passenger side of the Corvette, and opening the door for Rogue with a comically dramatic flourish. At least it made her smile.

Scott gave him a wary look, like he still didn't like this and absolutely couldn't wait to bitch about at great length. "Does this mean the Sisters aren't coming after all?"

"No, they are, it's just Helga's getting' 'em and gonna meet us there. Transport's gotta be instantaneous, you know, 'cause there's that problem with daylight occurring every twelve hours or so, kind of makes long distance travel difficult without a little supernatural help."

That really pissed him off; clearly he had gotten his hopes up about that. After Scott had turned away, Srina whispered in his ear, "The Sisters?"

"Coupla identical twin vampires. They're good - well, kinda - but as vicious as all hell. They're our trump cards in case it all goes to shit."

Srina looked dubious about working with vampires. "'Cause they're undead?"

"That, and they can't be affected by telepathy."

"Telepathy's a possibility?"

"Anything's a possibility. You remember Chimera; these guys will do whatever they have to do to save their own skins and promote their agenda. And for that reason, we have to be willing to do anything to stop them, even get in bed with some slightly psycho vampires."

The mention of Chimera made her shudder in revulsion, and she hugged him more tightly as they walked over to his motorcycle, parked just behind a slightly overgrown lilac bush. He'd called Srina before he left L.A. two days ago, asked her to come in, and she flew to Baltimore, so he could meet up with her and Marcus at the same time. She and Marc got on well, like he expected; Marc usually got on well with anyone who gave him a chance. Although Srina had told him that she and Marc had talked about him a lot of the time, a consequence he hadn't fully considered, and now he was wondering what the hell Marc had told her about him. There were so many possibilities that he decided he couldn't think about it or it would drive him nuts.

He was glad Srina had come to help. Thinking about how he had killed Celia and ended up in the Organization made him feel even more sorry for himself, along with an intense hatred of himself and his stupid weaknesses. What that guy Malloy said so long ago - _"It's melodramatic to say that some people are doomed from the start..." - _applied not just to Celia, but himself; he knew that now, and wondered if Malloy knew it back then when he said it. The worst part was Logan was sure he had doomed himself, with his bad choices and his fucked up feelings. He had to fix it, he had to stop doing this before he dug himself into a deeper grave (and while on the surface that didn't seem possible, he knew from hard experience there was no such thing as the "lowest point" - there was always something lower), but he wasn't honestly sure how.

He had to find a way out, a way to change who he was. He didn't know how long it would take, or where or how to start, but he knew he had to before more people died around him. He had what he felt were three options after this: go back to England with Srina, and try to have a "normal" life for a little while, just "settle down" and stay out of trouble (that did have a certain temptation to it, even though he couldn't even imagine having a normal life); return to the mansion and try and be a self-defense teacher or whatever (not so tempting - he still wasn't sure he could deal with a bunch of kids on a regular basis); or return to Los Angeles and pick up where Angel left off, keeping the human and inhuman bad guys down (that one should have had no appeal at all, especially since he wasn't crazy about L.A. and didn't want the Powers to think he liked the gig ... but there was something strangely liberating about working alone, and not holding back ever in a fight).

He wasn't even close to making up his mind, but he felt that Mirror Lake would make it up for him. If not a sign, at least he could use it as an excuse to go one way or another, and that would have to be good enough.


	2. Part 2

2

Sadly, even a death god had his limits.

Once a god was dispersed, even he couldn't bring them back. A god could insure that dead was actually dead. But what of a god who committed suicide?

It was rare, but it had happened on a few occasions. The one that most interested Osiris was an Aztec god lost to time, by the name of Xiuhcoatl. Represented by a fire snake, it was the god of drought and scorched earth, not the most pleasant fellow; all he could honestly do was kill, and in slow, torturous ways. You'd think that would be enough to make him happy, but no.

After Camaxtli was forced to abandon the Human realm, Xihucoatl (mentally dubbed Zooy, so he didn't have to contemplate so many jarring syllables), his chosen successor, despaired of losing his only hope for greater power, and one of the few friends he had, so he went off to oblivion.

But self-immolation was not the same as true dispersal, and Osiris was convinced he could resurrect him. And more.

See, what was lost to time - but not his archives - was the fact that Camaxtli knew he was in danger of getting run out on a rail, so he hedged his bet. In the case of death, his power would jump to Zooy, and ironically, they would both be doubly powerful. A win-win situation. But it was yet another rare thing: god as avatar. It could be done, but usually wasn't, simply because most gods were power hungry, back stabbing ingrates, who would arrange for the death of their "friend" so they could take their power. That wasn't a problem with Zooy, as he was less powerful than Camaxtli, and also, to use current Human terminology, whipped. He was so slavishly devoted to Camaxtli you'd think he loved him - if gods were honestly capable of such a low concept. Of course, Zooy was so unstable, it was possible he did.

But when a god made a fellow god an avatar, it was different. They connected at a quantum level, at a level far beyond the physical, dipping into realms unknown by any other beings. Death wasn't powerful enough to break those bonds. Which was why he started to wonder what would happen to the current Camaxtli avatar if the former one was resurrected - with his tight connection to Camaxtli far beyond the physical, the other physical, limited avatar would be in some deep shit. So of course he had to bring him back, a complete nutter or not.

Beneath the archives was a basement made of the dead. Skeletons and the composted remains of their flesh stacked like bricks and mortar, the very tools of his trade, the slaves of his creation, demon, human, and things that once existed or never really had a chance to exist because he put a stop to them before they could. It was a place that might depress or even horrify others, but he was the god of the dead; to him this was beauty, and the purest representation of his power. He could resurrect and reanimate every god damned thing in here if he so desired; it wouldn't even be hard. Life and death were simply opposite sides of the same coin, and to control one was to control it all.

In the center of the basement was a cyclone of energy, blue-black and yet prismatic, it swirled and coruscated around an invisible axis, contained only by the circle or fresh remains on the floor, the remnants of a demi-god he took out especially for this occasion. Even from a distance, Osiris could feel the almost tidal pull, the intense tug of the god energies being drawn together and reformed. It wouldn't be long now.

Oh, was that bitch going to be in for a surprise. No one Human ever threatened him and lived to gloat about it.

3

He had warned her they would go fast, so why was she screaming in his ear now?

Logan pulled over to the shoulder as soon as he shed enough speed and knew where the hell he was going, and Srina, who still had her fingernails dug into waist, smacked him hard on the shoulder. "Ow! Hey!"

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" She snapped. "Are we breaking a land speed record on this thing?!"

"No. Did you hear a sonic boom? Can you get your nails out of my gut now?"

She did with a sigh, resting her forehead heavily on his shoulder. "This is insane. Do we have to go this fast?"

"Hafta? No. But I wanted to get there ahead of the others, do some personal reconnaissance."

"Which the others don't know about?"

"No."

"Exactly how far ahead of them do we need to be?"

He shrugged, looking around and trying to determine where they were. If his guess was they had just hit or were about to hit Illinois, which was pretty damn good. "Not really sure, but just taking a guess at how long it'll take for them to get out of New York traffic ... if I keep going, we'll have maybe eight hours, nine."

"Really?" She thought about that a moment, then asked, "How much time will we have if you get this thing up to insane speeds now?"

"I dunno ... nine, ten? Why?"

"We have time to get a beer, catch a nap?"

He looked back at her as best he could. "Is that really what you want to do?"

She made a show of thinking about it, then buried his head in the side of his neck, very gently nipping his skin with her teeth. "What do you think?"

"I think I'd better start the bike."

"I think you'd better," she agreed, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. At least this time, she didn't dig her nails into him.

* * *

They stopped near the North Dakota/Minnesota border, as there was something so depressing about the idea of being in North Dakota that he wanted to put it off as much as possible.

They got a cheap motel room, but not so cheap it rented by the hour, as those were inevitably nasty. Although there was some grand idea about getting a beer across the street and maybe calling for a pizza, ultimately all they did was fall into bed, having a belated, personal reunion.

At least they had the time to kill - Logan was pretty sure that, 'Vette or not, Marc and the others were far behind. No turbo drive on his coupe.

Still, as they laid in bed and watched slats of sunlight stripe the off white acoustic tiles on the ceiling, he glanced at his watch, and tried to guess a time with a significant margin for error. "We probably oughta get going in an hour."

"An hour?" Srina said, settling her head on his chest. She liked to do that, and sometimes he wondered if she was listening to make sure his heart was still beating. An odd thought, but there you go. "I think I need more sleep than that."

"Hour and a half?"

"Boy, you're generous."

"I'm nervous, actually. Marc might find a way to get here faster. Or Scott."

"That anal kid?" Well, Srina was older than Scott, so he supposed she could call him a kid. "How would he? Does he have a road map tattooed on his eyelids?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it past him. But no, I figured he'd want to speed things up just 'cause Marc will drive him batshit." He idly stroked her soft magenta hair, which was a bit shaggier than it had been last time he was in London. It hadn't been that long ago, had it?

"They don't get along?"

"Hell no. Scott thinks Marc's amoral and trigger happy, and Marc lives to annoy the shit out of anyone who doesn't like him."

"Like you?" She looked up at him with a small, sardonic smile.

"Ha. Even worse, actually. I think Marc gets off on making the repressed deeply uncomfortable."

"And yet you sent them on a road trip together."

"Hey, whatever doesn't kill Scott will only make him stronger."

She traced circles on his chest, a secret language of symbols he couldn't begin to decode. "So what is the game plan?"

"Technically? Infiltration initially, then we fire with all barrels. But it's easier to do damage to a fortress when you start the siege inside. If we started from the outside in, they might have the ability to hold, even against Scott blasting them and Marc giving them all his RPGs."

"RPGs?"

"Rocket propelled grenades."

Now her look was more penetrating and serious. "That's a joke, right?"

"No. He has lots of military hardware, much of it technically illegal for civilian ordinance. But that doesn't stop him."

She sighed, her breath warm against his skin. "You have the weirdest friends."

"Does that include you?"

She slapped him lightly on the stomach, and he chuckled at his own joke. Oh, he was sure he'd pay for it, but it was worth it. After a moment, she said, "That's where I come in, isn't it? Getting you inside undetected."

"Only some of us. The rest of us are going in in more traditional camouflage."

"Gonna wear fake shrubbery?"

"Uniforms. That's why I want to do a little advance recon, see if I can catch a glimpse of the guys in their suits."

"Ah." She sounded unconvinced. "How do you know they wear uniforms outside of their base or whatever? Wouldn't that draw unnecessary attention to themselves?"

"If there was anyone around to look, yeah. But we have to assume these guys pass themselves off as military to bring in their equipment. Nobody might talk about it, but some people have gotta know they're there."

"They have to get supplies."

"Exactly."

"Are they military?"

"In a way, yes."

"And in a way no?"

"Right. These guys are everything and nothing, which is why they're so hard to nail down."

She continued tracing symbols down his torso, letting the silence drag out, and he sensed her discomfort. "How many people are going to get hurt?"

"I have no idea. But I'll try and take the brunt."

She propped herself up and looked down at him, her features sharpening as her face took on a stern countenance. "The hell you will."

"You know I can take it. I always heal."

"Maybe, but I don't want ever want to see you impaled through the throat and nailed to a wall again, okay?"

He nodded, sure shrugging would send the wrong message. "Doesn't sound like something I wanna repeat either."

She scrutinized him closely for a full thirty seconds, doubt of his veracity clear in her eyes, but then she decided to drop it, or at least fight about it later, as she laid back down, partially draping herself on him. Her skin felt nice, she smelled nice; he just suspected he liked not being alone, and being with a woman he felt comfortable with. And he did feel comfortable with her, because she technically knew more about his past - and the old "him" - than he did. That's why he knew he'd be stupid to continue walking away from her. "I know you're going to try something anyways," she grumbled, twirling some of his chest hair around her finger and tacitly threatening to pull it out. Now that would hurt.

"I could use your help with somethin', Sri."

"Of course you could, that's why I'm here."

"No, I mean not related to this. I was wondering what you'd think if ... if after this is all over, I move to London." She gave him that skeptical look again, but before she could say anything, he quickly pressed on. "I was tryin' to decide what I wanted to do, and I realized there was nothing stopping me from combining them."

"Combining what?"

"Well, Angel's packed it in, and I thought about going to L.A. to cover for him, but I don't like L.A that much. Then I thought I'd really rather be with you, and then it occurred to me there are a lot of demons in London too. Hell, a vampire gangster owes me. And he and his people haven't been able to find a hint of Spider, and if the vamp mobsters can't find you, some serious shit has happened to you. I should try and find out what happened to him, if nothing else."

"Spider?"

"Mutant guy, British, limited control over gravity. He was fucked over by these assholes too, and I'm not sure he ever really recovered from it." Even Marc said the last time he spoke to him he seemed depressed and irritable, and since Hashim and his people hadn't heard a damn thing about any gravity defying mutant with large, compound style eyes, the possibility that Spider had gone ahead and committed suicide loomed larger. He'd never been able to handle the shambles of his life after the Organization was through with him, and Logan wondered sometimes if Bob shouldn't have let him remember everything. Maybe Spider would have been better off in the dark - and maybe he should count his blessings that he couldn't remember much. "The last anyone heard from him, he went back to London, but it's going on months now, and he wasn't in the best state of mind when he was last seen."

"Could they have gotten to him?"

He knew she meant the Organization. "I doubt it. I think they'd have used him by now if they had him in control, and believe me, it'd be easy to tell if Spider struck somewhere." He didn't tell her that the Organization had made him a raging psychopath, as that might bring on Chimera flashbacks she didn't need. Still, the atmosphere was getting too glum, and he didn't want to dishearten her before things got started. "Besides, it does give me another excuse to settle in London for a while."

"Another?"

"You're the first."

She raised an eyebrow at that, and tried very hard to fight back a smile. "You've already gotten in my pants. No need to keep trying."

"Of course I do, 'cause I want to keep getting in 'em." He grinned at his own joke, and admitted, "I'd get my own place, y'know, I'm not askin' to move in -"

"Why not?"

"'Cause we're both more accustomed to living alone, and I doubt you'd want any demons with a grudge against me knowing where you live. But that doesn't mean I couldn't stay over for a few days, or you couldn't ..."

She suddenly looked concerned and ever so slightly befuddled. "Are you saying you're planning to move to London to become a demon hunter?"

"Basically, yeah. Somebody's gotta do it."

She tapped her fingers on his sternum. "What have I said about your life being fucked up?"

"Look, I know, but I really don't think it could get any less fucked up. The law of averages doesn't support it."

"You couldn't try?"

"I have tried. It always ends up coming back to bite me on the ass, or worse yet, the people around me. Every time I hide, the ending is always the same: somebody dies or gets hurt. I'm done with that. I have to do something different; I have to try and get control over my life. For so long I've been controlled by other people and circumstances ... I can't do that anymore. I'm tired of it."

"Oh, I understand, and it's admirable really. But ... demon hunting?"

"What the hell else am I good for? Interior decorating?"

At least she had the decency to pretend to think about it. Still, by her sly smile, he knew a joke was incoming. "I think you'd make a damn impressive gigolo."

"Now there's a career option I hadn't considered. And I do like the idea of getting me some dowager tail."

She laughed, and so did he, figuring he had made the right decision. It felt right, and since so little in his life actually did, it seemed like a promising sign.

* * *

By the time they found Harmon, North Dakota, it was nearing sunset, the sky a pale blue gray slowly giving way to charcoal, and Logan was glad they'd gone fast enough that most of the scenery was a brownish blur, as there wasn't actually any scenery around here. Oh, there were hills and plateaus, but it was clear that North Dakota was definitely a prairie state, and he hated prairie states. They reminded him of the flatlands of Alberta, the endless prairies there, and he hated those too. Maybe it was the fact that you could see for seemingly miles in any direction and had no place to hide, or the fact that with few objects to train the eye on, you could actually lose direction quite easily, and get so insanely fucking bored that you didn't care if you got back on track or not.

As for Harmon, it didn't seem worthy of the name "town". As far as he could tell, it consisted of a cluster of trailer parks, a couple of ranch style houses with barns and barren fields, a bar, a supermarket, a small clot of fast food places and smaller shops, a giant feed lot, three gas stations, and the Quik-Mart. Why did anyone live here? He'd have run away screaming long ago - like maybe five minutes after birth.

And the so called Killdeer Mountains weren't actually mountains at all but buttes, two of them with clefts spotted with the green heads of trees and aggressive flat tops, that seemed to loom over the town and the rest of the flat, dry expanse, but only because they were something for the eye to settle on after unrelenting bland sameness. He estimated the only he had a good view of was only about seven hundred feet high. He wanted to find someone and point out that in Canada that was a speed bump, but they already lived In North Dakota - wasn't that bad enough?

The Quik-Mart looked like a Circle K with a bad paint job, and the asphalt of the parking lot bore a spider web of cracks from the heat of the day, some of which still lingered, rising off the pavement with the odor of baked cement and melted rubber. There was a single car in the lot, an '02 Toyota Corolla with minor front end damage, so they had beat Marcus here, probably by a wide margin, even though they'd slept in a bit longer than they should have.

They went inside the fluorescent lit convenience store, which smelled of over brewed coffee and microwave burritos, and the clerk behind the counter, a middle aged bald guy in an unattractive brown and mustard smock, looked at them with instant suspicion. Logan assumed they didn't get many strangers around these parts, but he wondered if the undue hatred was due to his weird hair (that wasn't his fault!), the fact that Srina was Indian, or Indian with magenta hair. Either way, he felt justified in giving the man a withering glance.

He went to refrigerated cases at the back of the store to get a beer, and since he told Srina they'd be on recon for about an hour (that was how long he figured she'd be able to live with the boredom; after that, he figured she'd snap), she went to get some food, which put her in the candy aisle. They were close enough that he could hear her bitch. "This is complete and utter pants! Do Americans have none of the good chocolate bars? I mean, Tootsie Roll - what the fuck is that?"

He didn't bother to mute his sigh. "Do you want a beer?"

"Do they have John Smith's?"

That was the name of a British beer that had never, to his knowledge, made it to the States. "Do they have Maltesers?"

"No, so ... oh."

"How about a Red Bull?"

"Booze?"

"Caffeine."

"Fair enough."

He went down to the other end of the cold case and got her a Red Bull, and heard the electronic chimes above the door sound as a new customer waked in. He looked up at one of the curved anti-theft mirrors near the front of the store, and quickly noted that whoever was coming in was wearing camouflage. He quickly returned to the candy aisle, and, tucking the cans under his arm, grabbed Srina's hand. "We need to go invisible now," he hissed.

She gave him an annoyed look. "What, no please?" But her eyes turned black, and he knew she'd done it anyways. "What's going on?"

"Let's see." He started walking towards the front, taking her with him, and she followed with more curiosity than reluctance.

"Hey Greg, how goes it?" The clerk asked, with forced amiability.

'Oh, same ol' same old," the man replied. He was a kid in his twenties, with a buzz cut so aggressive you could see where his scalp had been sunburned beneath his stubbly, fine blond hair. Although he was wearing generic camouflage military fatigues, he was wearing a black vest that looked like body armor, which was a strange thing to wear on the outside of your uniform jacket. The clothes seemed to slouch on his lanky frame, like they couldn't find any that fit him, or he had recently lost a lot of weight. His chiseled, lean face was still spotted with acne, and Logan estimated his age around twenty three or so. Far too young for a dangerous gig like this - he wouldn't last long. Saddiq could kick his ass without raising a sweat. There was a telltale bulge under his left armpit, indicating he was armed, and Logan could smell the gun oil somewhere beneath his too heavy aftershave (since when did soldiers wear Paco Raban?) and a whiff of body odor, suggesting his deodorant was losing a battle against the North Dakota heat. "Three packs of Marlboros, and a can of Skoal vanilla," the kid said, pulling a stick of beef jerky out of the canister beside the cash register and sticking it in his mouth like a cigarette. Since he didn't smell of smoke, none of the tobacco could possibly be for him. Smokers smelled like it, no matter how well they showered or laundered their clothes, or how many days thy had been without a smoke; it just oozed through their pores, like it did with hardcore drinkers.

Glancing out the window, he saw an all terrain jeep with a camouflage paint job parked right outside the door. It was a terrific bit of luck, as rather than trying to follow Marc's directions, they could just follow this kid's jeep back to the base.

While the clerk put the smokes on the counter, he looked over Greg's shoulder and then glanced up at the curved mirrors, clearly looking for them. As Greg pulled out his wallet and put money on the counter, he finally noticed. "Something wrong?"

"I dunno. There were a coupla real weirdoes in here, but I can't see 'em now."

"Weirdoes?"

"Yeah, I think they were bikers or punks or some shit like that. The guy looked like he'd just rolled off the back of a prison truck, and his girl looked like some kind of Chicana with the ugliest fucking hair color I've ever seen."

Srina gave him the British salute, the middle and forefingers raised in what would be seen, in America, as a peace symbol, but when delivered with such emphasis by a Brit meant "up your bunghole". Too bad he couldn't see it.

Greg looked around, looking straight through them before turning back to the clerk. "Is that the only way they were weird?" It was just the way he said it that confirmed Logan's suspicions: young or not, he was with the mutant hunters brigade.

It was the clerk's turn to look puzzled. "What d'ya mean?"

Greg shrugged and tried to play it nonchalant, which he really wasn't very good at. Some things should be left to professionals. "Just, y'know, they do anything kinda strange? Out of the ordinary?" There was a rack of tabloids on the opposite side of the counter, book ending the endless rack of gum and breath mints, and Greg pointed at the headline of the Weekly World News - that fine, upstanding newspaper - which had as its headline: "Mutants Building Orbital Death Star Platform Above Florida". (It pushed the "Bat Boy - Son Of God?" story to the side, which must have disappointed Bat Boy.)

The clerk glanced at it as he started bagging up all of Greg's smokes. "Muties? Oh, come on, don't they all exist in big cities? New York, California, places like that."

Logan had no idea California was a city.

Greg stuck his wallet in his back pants pocket, and as soon as he moved his hand away, Srina leaned in and plucked it out, so gently and deftly that he never noticed. She flipped it open, and his i.d. gave his name as Greg Amundson (his age - 23. Damn he was good ... ), and in spite of his obvious youth, he already had a Visa and an American Express gold card, along with a debit card. There was another card stuck in his wallet among his cash (about fifty dollars). It was a plain white card with a metallic strip and a bar code on it, and absolutely nothing else. It took him a moment to realize what it was: a key card. And since he wasn't staying at a hotel, it could only be a card for one thing. He leaned over and gave her a small, quiet kiss on the cheek.

"Well, you'd be surprised; they can pop up anywhere, sometimes literally. If, uh, if you see them again, or anybody else kinda strange, why don't you give us a call at the base? We can check 'em out." Who knew the military had the absolute authority to question anybody who "looked funny"? That wasn't at all autocratic.

"Uh, okay. But you're not listed in the book, you know ..."

"Right." He picked up the pen that say besides the cash register, and scribbled down a phone number on the back of his own receipt. "Call this and tell 'em I gave you the number. We'll check 'em out."

The clerk took the number with a nod, but looked slightly alarmed. "So, er, muties are a big problem, even here?"

"No, but it's better to be safe than sorry. The freaks will take over if we're not careful."

Logan was expecting a Hitler salute and a sharp click of the heels, but Greg disappointed him by leaving that out. The clerk seemed appeased, and said, "I'll let you know if I see them again."

"Great. Take care." Greg took his small paper bag full of tobacco and started heading out, and they followed close behind him. Greg pushed open the door, and Logan quickly grabbed it, so he and Srina could follow him out without getting slammed in it. Greg didn't notice the door being open longer than it should have been, and neither did the clerk, who was still craning his neck, looking for them in the aisles. That comment about Srina's hair being ugly had pretty much guaranteed they weren't going to pay him squat- she'd never let him.

"Let's nail this gobshite," Srina whispered in his ear. They stayed on the concrete walkway ringing the front of the store, while Greg got into his jeep, tossing the bag in the passenger seat.

"Later. Let's find the rat's nest first, and then we'll bitch slap this fucker so hard his grandfather will get bruises."

"But we could take his uniform."

"One isn't enough, and I don't know if it's standard. Wearing the vest on the outside seems odd."

He started the jeep, which coughed and sputtered before catching, spitting carbon out of the tailpipe. The thing was about a hundred miles away from breaking down. "So we follow him? Don't you think he'll notice us, considering how this is the ass end of nowhere, and we're the only living souls about?"

"I have the scent of his exhaust. We don't have to follow closely at all."

They watched him pull out of the lot and take off own the road, headed towards the Killdeers, just like he expected. Srina kept them phased out as they walked towards his bike. "Hey, can you make the bike disappear?"

She had to consider that a moment, brow furrowing. "Maybe ... but you know they'll hear us."

"Yeah, but people have a tendency to believe their eyes over their ears." Not always - and certainly not if they were blind - but that was usually how it played out.

Now he hoped Marc would hurry up. He had no idea how long it would take for Greg to realize his key card was missing, and how long it would take for the base to invalidate the security code.

If he was right, this could be the big break they had been too cynical to hope for.


	3. Part 3

4

He knew, at some point, he would have to pull over again. And that was when he was going to blast him.

Seriously, Marcus was asking for it. He was being deliberately irritating, and clearly enjoying every second of it. Scott knew from the outset that Marcus would be trying to get on his nerves, so he had vowed not to let him get to him, but Marcus figured it out and went that extra mile.

It started with the driving - too fast, too wild - and while it was annoying, he was mostly concerned that he'd lose control of the car while showboating. Of all of them in the car, only Saddiq would be unharmed by a car accident.

When he refused to get angry at him for it, Marcus turned on the radio, headed for a station that seemed to play nothing but death metal. Scott gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the unearthly growling and screaming set over dissonant chords and machine gun drums, and was secretly thankful that he couldn't understand a single damn word the theoretical "singer" was grating out like a bone stuck in his throat.

Before Scott broke and blasted the radio out of the dashboard, Saddiq leaned up and asked him if he could turn it down, and because it was Saddiq who asked, Marcus politely turned the station. (Scott just knew if he had asked, Marcus would have turned it up.) Marcus then found a radio station that played nothing but comedy bits, with the bad language mercifully bleeped out, but no so much that you couldn't tell what they were saying, and some of the topics remained rather adult anyways. Was any of Dave Attell's stand up material suitable for airing before eight pm? But of course he made everyone laugh the hardest, although Scott thought Eddie Izzard's generally clean bit about a kitchen worker's befuddling confrontation with Darth Vader on the Death Star was funnier. (God, he was such a geek.)

They had to stop eventually, and the search for a fast food joint should have been the easier part since they were everywhere, but no, as Marcus was apparently a vegetarian (?! Him?!), and was very specific about where he would stop. He could do a ten minute rant about McDonald's - quote - "sucked ass" - unquote, and five minutes on how Burger King was little better, and even being downwind from a White Castle gave him a headache. He had to ask Logan about this, just to see how much Marcus was making up.

The kids went off to their respective gender's bathrooms, leaving him sitting alone at a window booth with Marcus, who had just gotten himself an absurd sized pop, the kind that was just short of a big gulp, and had to be served in a plastic cup, as a paper one would soak through or break with frightening rapidity. Since the kids weren't here, he felt he could say it. "What's your problem with me?"

Marcus poked a straw through the top of his cup, and gave him that reflex grin that was instantly untrustworthy. "Your problem with me is my problem with you."

"So this is philosophy bullshit?"

"Ah, so the Chuckster told you what I got my degree in."

"Chuckster?"

"It's the truth, man. Deal with it or not. You hate my fucking guts."

"I don't ... hate is a strong word."

"What word would you pick?"

He didn't expect to get put on the spot, but since it was Marcus, he should have anticipated that. "Dislike."

He gave him a mocking "thumbs up". "So much better."

There was a headache named Marcus forming right behind his eyes. He rubbed his forehead, and wondered if he should also blame the awful fast food coffee, which tasted like boiled mulch. "Look, we don't have to like each other to -"

"Why?" Marcus interrupted. "What the fuck did I ever do to you, Boy Scout? Need I remind you, last time I saw your pasty ass, I nearly got my fool ass killed keeping motherfucking Alien looking demons from stomping down your mansion and killing your kiddies while all the rest of you guys were in other dimensions. If I'm such a nightmare, why was I trusted with such a job?"

"I didn't make that choice."

"And after everything, you still wouldn't make that choice?"

Scott sighed and glanced out at the parking lot, wondering how far ahead of them Logan was. Knowing him, he went straight there, and they'd arrive just in time to save his butt. "What do you want me to say? Thank you for helping?"

"I just want to know why you got a mad on for me. It's 'cause of Logan, isn't it?"

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, and wondered if the truth would help. "You're an arrogant asshole who uses violence too much and too easily."

He made a rude noise and shook his head. "It is 'cause of Logan."

"Logan and I have our own set of difficulties."

"'Cause he was sniffing around your girl."

Scott glared at him, aware the effect was lost due to his visor. "Because he's too rash and too violent, and he doesn't seem to care about anyone but himself."

"So why does he show up when you guys call? If I was him, I wouldn't."

Scott glanced down towards the bathroom, not really wanting to discuss any of this. (Marcus had a degree in philosophy? So how did he end up a mercenary?) "The kids should be out of there by now."

Marcus pointed across the restaurant. "Rogue's giving Saddiq a hand at the salad bar, as he doesn't recognize half the stuff. I think they're flirting away from the downer adults."

Scott swallowed a groan, but just from general body language, he could tell Marcus's assessment was correct.

"Shit."

"Aww, what's the harm? They're what - sixteen, seventeen? It's a hormonal age."

"But that's not why they're here. Why did I let Logan talk me into letting them come?"

"Because they can help." Marcus took a noisy drink from his pop, and then said, apropos of nothing, "You know, he wasn't responsible for the problems between you and Jean. She was kinda fucked up before that."

The subject change nearly gave him whiplash, and the topic made him flush with rage. "You didn't even know her, so shut the -"

"I know her kind; Spider was kind of like her at times."

He scoffed. "Spider?"

"Afraid of her power ... or his, in his case. It's a horrible way to live."

He couldn't believe the audacity of this man. But then again, why was he shocked? "You don't know what the hell you're talking about. You didn't even _know_ her."

"Dude, I don't need to. She was a telekinetic who was working on developing her _telepathy_. 'Nuff said."

"What? She was a telepath too."

"Yeah, but her money power was telekinesis. So why didn't she want to work on that? I mean, tk is a kick ass power, but she seemed to prefer to pretend she didn't have it, choosing to stick to the mundane, passive power of telepathy. Why? 'Cause she must have freaked herself out. She got scared by what she could do, and decided to ignore it unless she couldn't. You must have known, man. In spite of what Logan's told me, I don't think you're that dense. She thought she could pretend to be a nice, good girl schoolmarm who couldn't actually make someone's heart explode inside their chest. She was harmless and cool, and not at all wicked powerful. Didn't that bother you?"

He opened his mouth to call him the most arrogant and ignorant person he had ever met, but he instantly closed his mouth, deciding that causing a scene here wouldn't be good. (And wasn't he right? In a way ... ) Finally, he said, "It wasn't like that. She could control her telekinesis -"

(Except every once in a while, and then it started to grow ...)

"- and she couldn't explode someone's heart in their chest. She really wasn't that powerful."

"Oh really? Could she move small things, like a teaspoon?"

"Well, of course. But -"

"Do you know how big the valve of a heart is? Not even as big as the round end of a teaspoon. All she would have to do is take a single one out, and boom, dead city. She was a doctor, right? She knew that - she had to know that. No matter how big Humans are, we are really a microcosm, a collection of small bits adding up to a greater whole. Take out the right small bit, and we cease to function; block a single correct nerve, and we can't walk; remove the fine lining within our lungs, and we can't process oxygen. A single tiny blood vessel explodes in our brain, and we drop like a hundred pound sack of shit. She could have stopped an army by theoretically concentrating on a single thing within all their bodies. There's no such thing as a weak tk - it's all how you use it. She knew that, I can't believe she wouldn't know that, so why did she think she could ignore it?"

"You like to hear yourself talk, don't you?"

"Hell yeah, I got an Isaac Hayes thing going on with my voice." Was there any way at all to phase this man? Logan you could upset at some point, but Marcus seemed annoyingly unflappable. Maybe that was the only way a degree in philosophy could help you in real life. "But you can't answer me, can ya?"

"Yes I can. She didn't ignore anything; she used it on a daily basis. She had it under control. She never wanted to use it to hurt people ... unlike someone at this table."

That made Marcus flash him that annoying grin again, all white teeth and a type of subversive smugness. "So why did she go hog wild when she finally let go, huh? When she finally let herself realize what she could do? From self-discipline to self-indulgence in the blink of an eye. Why?"

"She didn't ... it wasn't like that." (Was it?) "She saved our lives, okay? She did what she felt she had to do to save us."

"And with all that power, she couldn't save herself too?"

There it was. The question that Scott had been secretly obsessing about all this time, but he had never dared asked the Professor, because he was afraid of the answer. He was still afraid of the answer, and he didn't want to think about it, and certainly didn't want to discuss it with this man, who really was a stranger to him in spite of their semi-frequent run ins. "It was ... you're forgetting about Camaxtli, okay? That bastard influenced her in ways we can't imagine. I'm sure Jean didn't even realize it either." He slid out from the booth, suddenly eager to get back in the car, in spite of Marcus's jackass driving and shitty music.

"From what I understand, Camaxtli had her as an avatar only, so he wouldn't have given a shit if people thought she was alive or whatever. She went nuts, let go, and really enjoyed it, freaking herself out in the process. Do you think that's why she tried to kill herself?"

He spun on his heels, and snapped, "She did not!" Belatedly he realized he had shouted it, and now everybody in the restaurant - Rogue and Saddiq included - were staring at him. With the black wraparound goggles hiding Marcus's eyes, it was impossible to read his expression - and Scott wondered if people felt this way about him too - but his jaw was set, his mouth a grim line, like Scott had just confirmed something for him. Had he? Had Marcus said out loud his most secret, persistent fear?

He leaned in and whispered hastily, not bothering to conceal the acid in his tone, "You don't mention Jean again. I will put up with the rest of your shit, but if you bring her up again, I'll blast you into Utah. Do you understand?"

"I'm sorry, man."

He didn't want to know if that was an answer, or a continuation of something else. He just walked away, heading out the door to avoid the continuing stares. He wasn't sure what he hated more: Logan's shady "friends" or doubts that did nothing but kill him inside.

5

By the time they got back to the Quik-Mart, there was a new clerk on shift, a young woman with an acne problem even worse than Amundson, so Srina didn't have to make them invisible the whole time they were there. Still, they parked out of sight from the front of the store, and Sri was ready to make them go invisible if any jeep came driving by.

A few people came and went, but no one that came from the Killdeers area, and really the amount of traffic was ludicrously anemic. Did anyone live out here? Besides evil bastards, that was.

Finally he heard Marc's car coming: it was the sound of a well tuned engine coming towards them at an outrageous speed, as if he too was trying to speed through North Dakota before the ennui got him. Finally he started to slow down as he came into view, and by the time the car turned into the Quik-Mart lot, it was almost going a decent speed. "You know what I came to realize about Marc?" Srina offered, as the car angled in to park.

"What?"

"He's a complete lunatic. But, a great cook."

"Oh yeah. Did you try one of his omelets?"

She didn't get a chance to answer before Marcus opened his door, and got out, proclaiming cheerfully, "I have just upped this state's black population to one. Yaay me! Who wants to dare me to go into the store and pretend to shoplift?"

Rogue climbed out of the back laughing, and Scott, who was helping the kids out of the back, scowled at her for it.

"You remember that we're not supposed to be attracting attention yet?" Logan said, aware this was just Marc being Marc.

He replied, deadpan, "Does this mean I can't yell '_Where all the white women at'_?" Rogue was laughing so hard it sounded like she was having trouble breathing. No wonder Scott looked so annoyed - Marc must have figured out early on that she was a fan of his brand of comedy, and milked it for all it was worth the whole way here.

"No, you can't. Besides, I didn't think you were that into white women."

He shrugged a single shoulder, glancing around in reflex paranoia. "Hey, I ain't that picky about women. I'm pickier about my men."

"Well yeah," Srina agreed. "You're generally pricks."

Marc chuckled, and Rogue continued to laugh.

"Do we have a plan, or are we putting together a comedy act?" Scott griped.

He might have been a buzz kill, but he was right. "We've been to the base, such as it is. A soldier came in to the store, and Srina did her thing and never saw us. We followed him back home. Mirror Lake, such as it is, is just Southeast of what probably passes for a forest around here, and is marked as a munitions depot. The place behind the security fence is pretty damn small, so unless we've been totally suckered, the real base is probably underground."

"Of course it is," Marc agreed easily. "Since when do these fuckers work aboveground?"

Scott made a noise of exasperation, probably because it was clear that neither Srina nor Marc had any intention of cleaning up their language for the kids. "Fine, but that puts us at an instant disadvantage. We have no idea what the layout is like, nor the number of people within, not to mention what security measures they have. We could be walking into a trap."

"All I need is a soldier," Rogue interjected. "Let me touch them. I'll absorb all the info we need."

Scott shook his head. "I don't want you using your powers indiscriminately."

"It's not indiscriminate! It's why I'm here, right? To get information."

"The girl has a point," Marc agreed.

"I think the problem might be in drawing a soldier out," Logan said, before Marc and Scott could get in a fight. Scott seemed so tense he almost seemed to want to get into a fight. (Marc got that far under his skin, huh?) "We watched the place for a while, and no one left. We were lucky the one soldier who came out actually did."

"So that plan's screwed anyways," Scott replied, not appearing that disappointed by it.

"Not really," he said, somewhat hesitantly. He figured he could get Srina to get him inside the fence, and he could pull someone out, giving Rogue the shot she needed, but it was an inherently risky plan that he couldn't see Scott agreeing to, and to be frank, he wouldn't blame him. He wasn't wild about it either. But what were their other options?

It was just then that there was a strange noise, a muted kind of pop, and ten feet away from them, Helga, flanked by the Sisters, popped into existence. Helga shook her head and smacked it with the heel of her hand as if her ears were bothering her. "Shit, I hate cross country transports," she muttered, her tail twitching angrily.

"Hello -"

"- Logan -"

"- and Scott." The Sisters said with their usual false, eerie cheerfulness.

"Oh god," Scott moaned, rubbing his forehead like the three of them had given him an instant headache.

"Great timing," Logan told them, and said to the others, "I think our options just opened up."

Now that they weren't limited to the realm of Human physicality, there was little they couldn't do.

6

Once you got used to the idea of dimensions being whatever the creator wanted them to be, there wasn't much room for being shocked. Everything from a created solely from cinnamon red hots to ones full of free ranging boobs, Bob felt he had seen it all.

He had just learned he hadn't.

He entered the dimension not expecting much, since the gods referred to colloquially as the "Senior Partners" were not known for their imagination, except of course when it came to evil - then they could be fucking brilliant. This dimension was known as a "buffer zone", a place where other divine beings could meet with them without triggering a full scale war, or at least an escalation in the conflict. Because the war had never quite stopped.

How could it stop? Usually there had to be a winner, or some kind of ultimate goal. Technically there was a goal - wiping out the other side - but when you were both collectives of gods who were nearly impossible to kill, wiping out the other side couldn't be done. So there may have been a secondary goal, but whatever it was had been lost to time, and nobody cared what it had been. The war had become a beast all its own, a self-fulfilling prophecy and a perpetual motion machine, a runaway train on a Mobius strip - it kept going because it did, because it always had, forever and anon amen. Reasons had taken a backseat to the tradition of it all.

Buffer zones were in between dimensions, pocket realms where truces were called, and gods on opposite sides of the conflict could meet without having to kick each other's asses. They were rarely used, though, as talking to each other seemed wildly pointless.

Bob hadn't been to one before, so he really didn't know what to expect, but nothing in his broad array of experience had prepared him for this.

It was an Indian restaurant.

Red flocked wallpaper matched the thick piled crimson carpet, and gold light fixtures cast a dim, romantic dinner illumination over the whole of the cavernous restaurant, pooling around the circular oak tables. On the far left, an entire back wall was actively on fire, but no one seemed overly concerned about it. In fact, he could see the silhouettes of two people looking through a binder full of wallpaper swatches near the flaming wall, apparently selecting the new wall covering before the old had even burned itself out.

Bob walked on in, wondering how it could be a proper Indian restaurant without a representative of Ganesha somewhere (but, then again, the bad guys were probably not fond of him, as he could put the kibosh on most of their powers simply by showing up), and a waiter in a tight black and white uniform, carrying an empty tray, slowed his walk as he passed by. He was a short man with aggressively slicked back black hair, and a mustache that was probably in style briefly during a dark time in the '70, and Bob was honestly startled at how much he resembled the actor who played Manuel on Fawlty Towers (surely that was on purpose). "We'll need the table at seven," he said, betraying a hint of an English accent.

"What table?" Bob asked, but the waiter swept on by without responding. There were very few people at the tables, and no one was eating. There were several similarly dressed waiters, all sweeping back and forth, from kitchen to dining room and back again in some strange ballet of starvation, as they never carried anything but empty trays. No wonder no one came here - what kind of restaurant dimension wouldn't serve food? And, of course, have part of it be actively on fire.

He saw the being he was looking for seated alone at a table near the near right wall, within spitting distance of a kitchen surely uncontaminated by food. Its guise of choice was a rail thin, tall man in a Savile Row style double breasted charcoal suit with navy tie, distinguished silver hair just starting to thin at the temples, and he had a long, slender face. He looked more than a little like Peter Cook, the late British comedian, and Bob wondered if that was on purpose. As far as he knew, the Senior's had no sense of humor, save for a sadistic streak that surfaced at odd times. There was nothing inherently sadistic about manifesting Peter Cook, so Bob just figured it was a strange coincidence.

"Oh dear," the Senior said, finally looking at him full on. "You're still going with that surfer boy look? How does any being with higher nerve functioning take you seriously?" His black, featureless eyes narrowed, bringing up impressive crow's feet. "What is that supposed to mean?"

He was staring at his t-shirt, which was black and said across the chest, in orange block letters: "Think Testicles." He honestly had no idea what it was supposed to mean, but it made him laugh, so he had to get it. "It's a Zen thing," he lied, pulling out a wooden chair and sitting down. "So how've you been, Buzz?"

He scowled at him. "I've told you not to call me by that idiotic moniker."

"Well, what do I call you then? 'Hey you' is so impersonal."

"The Senior Partners are above such mundane and childish things as name. We are what we are; we are everywhere. Would you name every single molecule in the air?"

"I think quantum physicist already have."

Buzz glared at him, not appreciating the facts or his sense of humor. He never had. "Is this why you contacted me? To make your lame jokes?"

"No, not this time. I had a request."

"Oh? Is this related to your incursions on our lesser territories recently?"

For some reason there was silverware and red ceramic plates on the batik dyed cotton tablecloth. Bob had never seen such sparkling clean tableware in his life; not even a fleck of ash from the burning wall was visible.

"Ah, so you noticed."

"We have, and if we didn't know the Powers can't control you either, we would have reacted quite violently. Also, you haven't done anything that we can tell. What are you doing now, you brain damaged, imbecile god?"

Bob laughed, aware he should be insulted, but he wasn't. The Powers and the Seniors hated each other, but frankly he hated them both, so he didn't care. "I'm looking for somebody, Buzzy. As far as I can tell, he ain't in your lower realms, so I figure he's in your higher, locked off realms. I want him back. Give him to me and I'll go away, never to darken your towels again."

He sniffed imperiously. "We don't have any of your types of beings there. You're mistaken."

"He's not one of our beings. Well, not technically. I guess the Powers recruited him for some extra-curricular activities, but you guys tried to steal him back. I really don't care about that shit, I just want him back. He doesn't belong there, and I don't think he should have been recruited in the first place, so give him to me, and I'll call it square."

Buzz glared at him across the empty table. "Being on Earth has damaged your brain even more, hasn't it?"

Oh boy, this was going well, wasn't it?


	4. Part 4

"So why not just give him back to me, huh? He's of no use to you anymore, and he can only hurt you -"

"No one can hurt us in our realms."

"Okay then, why not let me in?"

His black, expressionless gaze never wavered. "Because we hate you."

Bob smirked, trying to will away a laugh. At least the Senoirs never bullshitted about this kind of thing. "Fair enough. But if I can't hurt you, there's no harm in it."

"Have you ever been given the idea that we want to make you happy?"

"He's one creature. He can't mean anything to you."

"I assure you no lower creature ever has. But the answer remains no."

Bob stared back at Buzz, trying to read the expression he was hiding behind his strangely neutral face. "You have plans for him."

He scoffed, attempting a smirk that came off as a painful grimace (he just wasn't used to having a face). "I don't even know who you're talking about."

"Bullshit. You know who and where he is - you're hiding him from me."

"These delusions of importance, do they give you a will to keep existing?"

"Stop fucking around with him. I guarantee he is no good to you anymore."

He chuckled without any obvious humor. "None of you are any good to us. The lower realms are becoming a solid waste of our time. The creatures are -"

He paused as two of the Manuels suddenly came over to the table, bussing it like they'd just eaten a large meal. After an annoyed glance, Buzz continued. " - doing a great job of spreading evil and irrelevance all by themselves. They don't need us. They're killing themselves off for no reason at a very rapid clip. Soon that plane will be a wasteland and -"

The very last Manuel bundled up the tablecloth and took it with him, and then two more came in, grabbed the table, and walked off with it, leaving them sitting in their chairs facing each other, with nothing in between.

"Is it seven already?" Bob asked, looking at his watch. Time was irrelevant here, so he wondered how they knew. Maybe seven was an arbitrary number.

"- we are not slumlords. What's the point of owning a world that's a smoldering ember?" Buzz stood up, straightening his suit. "That plane is past tense. You of all beings should know that."

"I don't give up that easily."

"More's the pity. There are some things that should be given up upon, before they destroy you. Now don't summon me again."

He started to walk away, gliding across the restaurant with inhuman grace, and Bob slowly unfolded himself from his chair, in no hurry as he stood and said, "I'm not giving up on him. Remember I tried to do this the easy way."

Buzz stopped and looked back at him over his shoulder, his black eyes narrowing to slits, as black veins of energy writhed under the fake skin of his face like hungry maggots. "You do not threaten me, Power."

"And you do not play games with me, or beings I happen to know. Don't forget who you're dealing with here."

"A divine asshole?"

"Exactly."

"Try to breach one of our higher realms, and we will obliterate you."

Bob held his hands apart, a gesture of supplication and invitation. "Feel free." He got a sense of Buzz's power questing, trying to feel out his mind or at least his intentions, but he couldn't get through, and he wasn't about to force the issue. Not only was it a violation of the few rules of this dimension, but it would leave him open to Bob's energy. He was not powerful enough, on his own, to overwhelm him; at best, it would be a stalemate.

He knew that, as he turned away and strode out of the restaurant, disappearing into a nimbus of bright black energy that seemed to collapse after him, like an explosion run in reverse.

Boy, when Angel got himself into the shit, he went head first, didn't he?

7

From a half mile away, the munitions depot looked so innocuous as to be boring. The banality of evil and all that jazz, although Marc had rarely encountered evil that mundane; mostly it was just evil that camouflaged itself very well.

As soon as he got a steady look at it, though, beyond its high tension fence and safety barricade, it started to glow like a casino in Vegas. "Holy shit," he gasped, keeping his voice low.

They had covered the last few hundred feet on foot, using the somewhat meager cover of the sprawling, scrawny "woods" to hide their approach. It may have been night, but the crescent moon and the hundreds of stars were bright enough that they couldn't count on "cover of darkness". (Well, that wasn't true of the Sisters, who seemed to carry their own darkness with them like a shroud, but Logan claimed that was a "vampire thing".)

"What is it?" Scott hissed, apparently deciding he was talking to him again.

"Full infrared spectrum coverage, from a half inch off the ground to about ten feet above it. Jesus Christ, these fuckers are completely paranoid."

"Inside the fence?" Logan asked.

"Yeah. Christ, you should see it; it's making my eyes water." To his eyes, it was a virtual cat's cradle of bloody red lines, vivid living hatch marks that nearly obscured everything beyond the perimeter fence. To see infrared was bad enough in itself, but when someone was using infrared beams of such quantity and intensity, it was like staring at the sun.

"What kind of infrared beams?" Helga asked. "Motion sensitive, heat sensitive? Can you tell the difference?"

"Of course I can tell the difference." He didn't mean to snap at her, but that was the equivalent of asking Logan if he could smell the difference between a Human and a bear. "We got heat from just inside the fence to about ten meters within the building, then it's heat and motion, giving way fully to motion by the time you hit the wall."

Scott sighed. "So even if we manage not to break the heat beams, they'll register us?"

"Exactomundo."

"Okay girls," Logan said. "That's your cue."

Saddiq looked confused. "Why?"

"Vampires have no body heat," Marc told him, assuming he didn't know that factoid. The Sisters were like dark voids in his vision, cold indigo spots often darker (colder) than the surrounding air and the ground itself, which was more disconcerting than he'd ever admit. "The sensors will never pick them up."

"The motions sensors will," Scott pointed out.

"Not if they have a bloody card reader in there, and they haven't invalidated it yet," Srina said, producing a white key card that she held out to the nearest Sister. The Sister - whoever she was - took it.

"If it works," Logan continued. "If it's still valid, it should shut down the security system, and we can just walk in."

"And if it's not," Srina admitted. "All hell will break loose."

"That's -"

"-cool-"

"-we like-"

"-hell."

Saddiq edged slightly closer to Rogue.

"We need a soldier alive," Logan reminded them. "Not mostly dead, not beaten to a pulp, alive and in pretty good shape, so Rogue can pull the info we need. Understood?"

"Aye-"

"-aye-"

"-Captain," they replied, with synchronized mocking salutes. They the turned and seemed to blend into the shadows of the scraggly forest, disappearing into the dark almost soundlessly, like they had been nothing but shadows themselves.

Scott sighed wearily, and crossed his arms over his chest. Although clearly unhappy to be here, he seemed more tired than annoyed. Marc kid of felt bad for being so blunt about Jean earlier, but hell, it was clear from his reaction that the guy had been thinking all the same things, he just didn't want to admit it. "Why do you trust them?" He was talking to Logan, and ironically, in a ragtag group like this, he was probably the only one Scott actually trusted. How funny was that? Did Logan know? "They're lunatics."

"Yeah, but they've never failed us so far."

Scott shrugged. "Why do I get the feeling they're biding their time?"

"'Cause they like to keep people off balance, even people they like. I think they think it's funny."

"You have the weirdest friends."

For some reason, that made Srina smirk.

After a long moment, Rogue asked quietly, "Where are they?"

"In by now, I imagine," Helga said.

She was right. Marc suddenly saw two cold, dead spots in that painful glow of bright lights, and commented aloud, "How the hell did they do that?"

"They can do that jumping thing, right?" Rogue said.

She must have been addressing Logan, because he answered. "Yeah, it's a vamp thing."

The fence was what, twenty feet high, and topped by razor wire? Quite a leap. Vampires must have been the kangaroos of demons.

Logan, who had been frowning in thought and not paying attention at all to the depot, turned to Saddiq and asked, "You have above average stamina and metabolic processes, right?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I was thinkin' it would be better for Rogue to "borrow" your powers once we go in. Near invulnerability is better than a healing factor, and we all know you can fight."

"Unless they have adamantium weapons," Scott countered. "We know they've used them before, and they can penetrate your skin, Saddiq. I really think it would be better - oh, I can't believe I'm saying this - if she borrowed your powers again, Logan."

Rogue just shrugged. "I'm cool with that."

Then Logan shrugged, and the body language was so identical it was almost funny. "Fine, whatever." He looked at him, and asked, "How the girls doing, Marc?"

It was as if he asked on cue, because a beat later, the compound went dark - at least infrared dark. It was disorienting, like he'd suddenly gone blind. "They must have found a working card reader, and it must have been cool, because the sensors just died."

"Great, we're in," Helga said, starting through the woods towards the depot. Perhaps in deference to the more covert nature of this, she was wearing a long sleeved black shirt, black pants, and black boots, covering most of her green skin. But it was a skin tight shirt, and her green tail still hung out the back, twitching ever so slightly. It wasn't like he'd ever seen any other green skinned chicks before, but of them all, he knew that Helga had to be the hottest one. And, again, you had to love a girl with her own flamethrower (although why she didn't bring it he had no idea).

"I really don't like this half-assed planning on the fly," Scott grumbled. He and Logan were following after Helga, and Srina trailed Logan, clearly still unsure about the rest of his "friends". Srina seemed nice enough, and just eccentric enough that he could see why she and him were probably an ideal couple, but she certainly had some trust issues.

"Neither do I," Logan admitted, "But hey, you gotta adapt."

They trailed out basically single file, with Saddiq willing taking up the rear, watching their backs. Cute and quiet kid, certainly alert if not paranoid, but then again, he was "built" to be some kind of super-soldier, right? A certain level of paranoia was probably programmed into his genes.

By the time they reached the clearing before the depot, one of the Sisters (again, he had no idea which one) opened the massive gates, and the other came out carrying a khaki clad man over her shoulder, like he was nothing more than a sack of potatoes. It was especially funny because the guy looked to be about a foot taller than her and about a hundred pounds heavier, but he didn't know how you quantified vampire strength. All he could tell was they were all much more stronger than they looked, no matter the appearance of their Human shell, and if you got in a fight with one without a handy piece of wood, you were in for a world of hurt.

The Sister dropped the soldier on the ground in front of them like he was a sack of mail, and it seemed like he wasn't unconscious at all, just badly dazed and possibly paralyzed with fear. He looked up at them with wide, glazed eyes, and had two pinholes bites in the side of his neck, where thin trickles of blood dribbled out. Scott scowled at the Sisters. "Did you have to bite him?"

They grinned with an enthusiasm that still seemed cold somehow. "We-"

"-didn't-"

"-beat him-"

"-up."

Logan pointed down at him, and asked, "Is he critical?"

"We-"

"-hardly-"

"-took any-"

"-just enough-"

"-to make him-"

"-compliant."

"As long as he ain't dying, I should be fine," Rogue said, pulling off her right glove with her teeth and kneeling down beside the guy, who was looking up at them somewhat uncomprehendingly, like he couldn't quite believe any of this was happening. Presumably he had never encountered vampires before.

Logan put a foot on his chest to keep him down, and a cursory glance showed his holster was empty, and equipment belt was missing; the Sisters must have stripped them and left them behind, or possibly crushed them to a pulp. Either was possible.

Rogue planted her bare hand on the side of the guy's face, like she was some kind of bogus faith healer trying to shove the "demons" out, and his eyes got even bigger, like he was being electrocuted. His face turned whey colored, and it seemed like capillaries were just starting to surface beneath the skin, like a spider web of blood vessels breaking out across his face.

Then Rogue let go, and the soldier's head dropped back hard, like he had been kicked in the face. He was certainly unconscious now.

"Ugh," Rogue said, sitting back on her haunches and holding her face in her hands. "You don't wanna know what he was thinking about the Sisters before they turned vamp on him."

"We-"

"-know-"

"-men think-"

"-things like-"

"-that about us-"

"-all the time-"

"-until they learn what-"

"-we are. Then they-"

"-aren't so eager for that-"

"-ménage a trois."

Scott shuddered, maybe because the thought had not honestly occurred to him before, and now that it had, he was completely grossed out. What, he'd never had that "twins" fantasy before? Okay, maybe the Sisters weren't the ones you wanted to fantasize about, unless it included two girls ripping your throat out and drinking your blood at the exact same time.

Rogue just sat there a moment, possibly gathering her thoughts or just blocking out the bad ones. Finally, she said, "There's four levels, but he's only ever seen two. The lower two are restricted access only, and his clearance level was never high enough. Man, I feel really weak."

Logan stepped off the soldier since he wouldn't be getting up any time soon (and when he did, he'd probably run screaming for the hills), and shot the Sisters a dirty look, possibly because they deliberately underestimated the amount of blood they took from the guy. They just grinned back at him, stereo parasites.

"Are there any mutants in there?" Scott asked.

She rubbed her eyes, and Marc noticed she looked more pale than she had before. Was that just from using her power, or was that a consequence of the soldier's weakened, anemic state? "Not that he knew of, not on the upper two levels. Peters said they have 'em on the lower two levels, but D'Agastino told him that's bullshit, it's just experimental equipment down there."

"Sometimes they call mutants 'equipment'," Logan noted bitterly. Scott nodded in grim agreement.

"But are they going to be just prisoners, or are they going to be totally psycho loony, like Chimera?" Srina asked.

"Chimera?" Scott repeated.

Logan made a dismissive hand gesture, and said, "Long story, doesn't matter now."

" But that is going to be a problem - determining enemy from victim," Scott noted.

"We'll know when they attack us," Marc interjected. Not only was that true, but it seemed the simplest test.

"What if they have some scary power, like spitting acid or causing spontaneous bleeding?" Srina said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking annoyed, mostly to cover her fear. He couldn't blame her, she wasn't really a fighter, but he suspected there was something he was missing here, subtext that she and Logan had both left out. Still, she was here, and even if that was out of some concern for Logan or need to prove herself to him, she showed up and hadn't run, and deserved credit for that.

"We'll deal with it," Scott assured her, slipping subtly into his element. Here was a problem that could use a concrete resolution - after all the weird shit that had caused upheaval in is life lately, he probably relished the black and white, the stuff that could be handled easily with reason or force. The stuff that couldn't - the girlfriend turned slightly mad god, for example - had probably been driving him slowly crazy. And who wouldn't it drive completely around the bend? He could think of several exes who - if given god like powers - would have smote him down to the ground by now.

Helga searched the pockets of the soldier's coat, and coming up empty, checked his shirt. His key card was on a chain around his neck, along with a photo i.d., and she just yanked on the chain hard enough to make it snap, coming away with both. "These will get us legally through the first two levels?"

The girl nodded, looking remarkably tired. One of her eyes had changed color, becoming the same cornflower blue that the soldier's eyes had been, but the other was her usual color - she just took enough from him to change one? "Unless we get noticed on the security camera, which could happen. Reynolds and Washington are on camera duty tonight, and they're pretty good."

"What security protocols will come on if we kill the power?" Logan asked.

"Complete lockdown; internal generators will keep most security functions active."

"Lockdown, though - will that keep people from getting out?" Logan pressed.

She had to think about that for a moment. "Only in the high security areas. The main egress will be reinforced by a blast door, so everyone inside the base will be stuck there until the power comes back on, or a Commander enters a general release code."

Scott made a negative noise and shook his head. "Too risky. How many people are inside right now?"

She stared blankly at her hand for a moment, and Marc heard Logan take a deep breath - was he parsing smells? "He … uh, he's not aware of an exact number, but it should be about twelve people, six per floor. He doesn't know about the lower two levels."

"Shit," Scott muttered, rubbing his jaw in thought and looking back at the depot. "We still have no idea how many people we'll be facing in there."

"Get me a higher ranking guy," Rogue suggested. "I'll find out."

"We-"

"-can-"

"-take out-"

"-twelve people-"

"-all by ourselves-"

"-no problem. We-"

"-once took out an-"

"-entire angry mob in-"

"-in Istanbul."

"No killing," Scott insisted, giving them a dirty look judging by his frown. "Not … unless it's self-defense, okay. Maybe. But it's a last resort."

"Camera observation post," Helga said suddenly. "It's in a separate room, right?"

Rogue nodded. "Right."

"Can we enter the base, and maybe … I don't know, use the elevator shafts, the ducts, something … and get to that room first? We take the guys out there, and we have no problems until we try and access the third level. If a soldier encounters us in the hall, we just knock him cold and stuff him in a closet."

"Or I can touch 'em," Marc suggested, holding up his own gloved hand. "They'll be paralyzed for an hour."

Helga nodded. "Works for me."

"There's no way to get to the camera room without getting spotted by the cameras," Rogue replied, sounding disappointed. "Not that he knows of."

"Oh bollocks," Srina sighed, and let her hands drop to her side. "That's my cue, inn't?"

"You're sure cameras don't pick you up?" Scott asked, not sounding skeptical, just trying to make sure.

She scoffed, her magenta eyes wide with anxiety. "Cameras pick me up all the time, mate, but the people looking at them still can't see me."

"Can you knock them out?"

Logan groaned just slightly beneath his breath, and said, "She's not going alone. No offense, hon."

"None taken. I really don't wanna bash some stupid bugger's brains out unless I have to."

"I'll go with you," Helga volunteered. Yeah, she had no problem bashing anyone's brains out - another thing you had to love about her.

"No, I will," Scott insisted, surprising … well, everyone. "I want to see the layout of this camera room anyways. I'm good with electronics; maybe I'll be able to figure out something we can do from there, and maybe I can get a look at the lower levels."

Marc himself was surprised when Logan just nodded, running a hand through his hair, betraying just a hint of anxiety. "Fine. We'll give you both five minutes from when you enter the base, then we're coming in. Okay?"

Scott nodded tersely, and said, "Come on, let's get this over with. The suspense is killing me."

"Couldn't you have picked a better expression?" Srina snapped, as Helga handed her the soldier's key card. They then walked off towards the base, but Srina waited until they were inside the fence before reaching out to grab Scott's arm - and then they both just winked out of existence, as if suddenly teleported elsewhere.

"They're still here, right?" Mark asked, just for confirmation. Logan nodded, either still smelling them, hearing them, or both.

"Has it gotten real cold?" Rogue asked, visibly shivering. "I'm freezing."

Logan held his hand down towards her. "I can warm you up."

She looked up at him quizzically, and asked, "You sure you're ready?"

"As I'll ever be. C'mon, let's go."

Rogue reached up and grabbed his hand with her own bare hand. He hauled her up to her feet, even while veins started popping in his arm, coming to the surface in angry relief, like burrowing worms trying to burst through his flesh. They grew up his arm and webbed across his neck, growing up into his face. Logan closed his eyes, and by the way his jaw had set, he was probably gritting his teeth. How much did it hurt when Rogue did her thing?

Conversely, the color had come back to Rogue's face, her lips seemed flushed with blood in fact, and Marc watched in rapt fascination as her eyes changed back to her normal color, and then started to take on a slightly greenish tinge, like Logan's eyes. When she let go, he stumbled back a step, but kept on his feet. "You okay?" Helga asked, her tail wrapping around his waist in a protective manner.

Logan nodded, but now he looked a little pale. "Yeah, I just need a minute to recover."

"Why don't you two stay here 'til then?" Rogue said, suddenly stalking off towards the depot, her eyes bright and hard. "I wanna get a better look at this dump."

Saddiq gave Logan a slightly puzzled look, and Logan jerked his head in Rogue's direction, indicating he should follow her. He nodded and scrambled after her, ever the good soldier.

"I'm thinking she took a little too much of you," Helga commented wryly.

They all agreed with that, but what could they do now except follow, and make sure she didn't jump the gun and try and enter the base earlier.

Oh boy - two Logans. This was going to be a party all right.


	5. Part 5

8

There were moments - few and far between, but still there - when it occurred to Jean she had completely lost herself.

She didn't know when or where or how, but sometimes she'd get this odd feeling that things had gone too far out of control, and she had never realized she had lost a grip. Right now, for instance.

All gods, no matter how minor, had their own private worlds, and she figured she deserved one at least, so she tried to make one. But she didn't know how, and her efforts were turning out to be pretty disappointing. She tried to picture her ideal world in her mind, make it come to life, but when she opened her eyes, she was in that representation of the garden, her former "happy place", although now it was almost unrecognizable. It was so overgrown, a veritable jungle full of lianas and trees with trunks so thick they'd have put California redwoods to shame, and if the mansion was somewhere around here, she could no longer see it. In fact, the longer she was here, the more she began to realize that her "safe" place was now a nightmare, something indicative of imbalance and incoherence, not a place of peace and comfort but one of chaos and rage. In retrospect, she had no idea how it had ever gotten this way.

Then she'd begin to wonder why she cared. So what if her former paradise had become an overgrown, ramshackle jungle? Who gave a shit? She could make it whatever she wanted, including that. She didn't need a "safe" place anymore anyways; she could create a world just for that purpose if she wanted.

Assuming, of course, she could get the hang of this whole "world building" thing. It was a shame she had no one she could ask. But if even a losers like Osiris could pull it together, she could. Bob never had though, had he? But he wasn't a proper god, just a reject, a cosmic misfire.

She was able to turn Alkali Lake into an ocean at the very least though, and gave it a sandy shore that she sat on, trying to ponder her next move. She was modifying the color of the sky, changing it from blue to green to red to brown (well, that was an usual color) when she got the sense that something was wrong. It was a feel deep inside, like a tug at that back of her brainstem, and suddenly she was aware of an … imbalance, greater than her own. What the hell was that?

She stood up and looked around, deeply puzzled. She was still alone here, wasn't she? No one could come here without her permission … well, another god, but even then, she'd instantly sense the intrusion. Wouldn't she?

She turned around, and gasped in shock as she found herself face to face with a being she had never seen before. He was a biped, very humanoid in look, but his skin was covered with huge, tan and silver diamond shaped scales, like a diamondback rattler made into a man. His eyes were huge and almond shaped, with slit yellow pupils and pupils swollen and an odd wet red, like they were rings full of blood, while his lips were thin and black, nearly nonexistent. He had no hair at all, his scalp looked like burnished copper and pewter, and he only wore pants of what looked like shed snakeskin, ragged and nearly translucent at the edges. His chest was oddly long and narrow, ribs poking through like he was a starvation victim baked hard by the sun. The power he gave off was intense, like heat from a kiln, and left a taste in her mouth like sand and charred flesh. She threw up a force field between them, but for some reason it felt flimsy, even to her. He didn't seem to notice or care.

"He'ss mine," he hissed sibilantly, his voice the sound of dead leaves scraping over dried bones. "The power belongss to me."

"What?" She started backing up, because the energy coming off of him seemed somehow hotter now, a nuclear blast furnace.

"It'ss mine!" He screamed, and the world around her seemed to collapse in on itself, the heat exploding inside her mind like a psychic fireball.

9

People willingly lived in North Dakota?

The idea that people did was honestly mind boggling to Chris Washington. He was assigned here, and yet he was still looking forward to the first honest opportunity to get the fuck out of here. As if being on the surface wasn't bad enough, they were _beneath _North Dakota, which was that much more boring then the surface world. And why the hell were they below the surface?

Nothing ever happened here, In the state generally and in this place specifically. People came and went with extremely regularity, but only higher rankers or mysterious "civilians" who had insane security clearance levels. Why civilians would have levels that high at a secured location, especially when not all soldiers had a clearance that allowed them into the lower two levels? There was some weird shit going on here.

"Hit me," Reynolds said. Guy was chewing noisily on a mint toothpick, his new oral fixation since the close quarters and recirculated air had made him give up smoking. It still remained the number one vice of everyone around here, save for Chris; he'd had asthma as a kid, and couldn't fathom the idea of willingly sucking down something other than air.

Chris checked his cards, which were a jack of hearts and a ten. He was pretty sure Guy couldn't beat a twenty, not with a paltry two as a face card. He pulled a card off the top of the deck and tossed it face up on top of his two of diamonds - it was the Queen of spades.

"Hit me again."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Hit me."

Guy really didn't know how to play blackjack, did he? Chris shrugged and tossed down another card on his side of the console, vaguely aware that the elevator from the surface had been activated. The computer said that it was Mueller coming down, which made him curious. Was it that dull on the surface? Actually, come to think of it, yeah probably.

He tossed down one more card, this time an eight of diamonds. "Shee-it," Guy drawled, throwing over his hole cards, which were a two of clubs and a three of hearts. "Busted."

"You really should have stood at seventeen," Chris noted, sweeping the cards together in a pile. The console that made up the bulk of the observation room was as high tech as possible, made of impact proof plastic and brushed aluminum, with flat touch screens scattered among the camera's monitors, which stood stacked six to a row, one after another, and reminded him vaguely of a Tetris game. It had taken him a while to get used to the system, which was still plagued with glitches. For that reason alone, he bet this place ran on Windows.

He passed the deck of cards to Guy, who took them and suggested, "How 'bout War?"

"Why don't you just suggest Go Fish? Shit man, you have to learn how to play a proper game of cards, so when we hit Vegas, you don't look like a chump."

"Hell, when we hit Vegas, I ain't gamblin'; I'm headed for the Mustang Ranch. I mean- hey, is that elevator empty?"

Chris peered at the correct monitor, which showed the doors opening on the first level … and no one inside the elevator. The doors then closed without incident, and the elevator started its return ascent to the surface. "Huh. The code had Mueller in there."

"Think he's fucking around with us?" Guy wondered, shuffling the cards. He wasn't very good at it, and the noise seemed excessively loud.

"Why would he?"

"'Cause he's as bored as we are."

That was a point. He activated the short range radio, and sent, "Mueller, come in." There were several seconds of silence, broken only by the slap of cards on the console as Guy dealt the next hand. Chris saw his face card was the ace of spades. "Kevin, c'mon, stop fucking around. We know you sent down that empty elevator."

The hallways remained empty, and the elevator didn't come back, but suddenly Chris had a bad feeling about this.

"Dude?" Guy asked. "Wanna hit or not?"

"Huh? Oh." He looked at his hole card, revealing the King of diamonds. He flipped it face up, and said, "Blackjack."

"Shit!" Guy snapped, tossing the deck down hard on the console. "What the hell am I doing wrong?!"

"Nothin', it's just luck." A sub-corridor door opened, and once again the computer said it was Mueller's card in use. "What the fuck is going on? Kevin, c'mon, check in."

Now Guy was starting to get concerned, an expression of worry flashing across his Middle American, corn fed farm boy face. "Could this be a new glitch? The doors opening by themselves?"

"And constantly reporting Mueller's i.d. in use? That's one fucking weird glitch. "Chris shifted nervously in his chair, and muttered, "I should report this to Alvarez."

"Whoa, dude, report what? Nothing? C'mon." He paused, and said, with a goofy grin that revealed the large gap between his front teeth. "Maybe it's a ghost. Woooo …."

"Knock it the fuck off. Remember the last briefing? Anything weird, report it."

It was just then that he heard the lock on their door release.

They both jumped to their feet, wheeled chairs shooting half way across the room, and pulled their sidearms, aiming them at the adamantium plated door before it hissed open.

There was nothing there.

"All ghosts put your hands up," Guy said mockingly, but the weakness in his voice undercut the sarcasm.

Chris edged forward, heart in his throat, leading with his gun. He was so tense, he nearly jumped when the door started to hiss shut.

"It's a glitch," Guy insisted. "It's gotta be." Then why was he whispering?

"There's somebody in here," Chris said quietly, wondering what the hell was going on.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of red, and that was the last thing he saw before everything went black.

* * *

Two quick blasts of the eye lasers - or whatever it was that Scott actually had; they seemed to hit the soldiers like a ton of bricks, sending them sailing across the room like they'd been nailed by a Buick - and Reynolds and Washington were down, and they had the observation post all to themselves.

"You know, if we didn't have to go back and get directions from Rogue, this would have gone faster," Srina pointed out, relaxing into visibility and letting go of Scott's arm.

Scott headed straight for the main console of room, not even giving her a second glance. "It didn't matter, she was right behind us."

"Copping Logan's 'tude - I noticed."

"She gets that way after she absorbs him. It's annoying, but presumably this one will fade a lot faster than the last time."

Srina left him to look and faff about, while she crouched down and picked up one of the guns the soldiers had pulled. She didn't know much about guns, and she didn't like them, but this one looked kind of funny. She was going to ask him about it (well, he was the American, and if they knew anything, they knew their guns), but when she stood, he made a small noise of frustration, and said, "Why did they have to make all the hallways look the same?"

''Cause they're military and into all that uniformity and conformity shit." She looked at the monitors, a large rectangle six across and six up with monitors, and was stunned at how much it looked like the security office of a high tech building she "snuck" into last year. Well, they didn't have touch screens and computer coded data in the lower right corners of the display, but it was still similar enough that she knew there was a wrinkle in their plans. "Are you looking for cameras showing the lower two levels?"

"Of course! But it isn't like they labeled these things …"

"See these numbers?" She said, pointing to the bank of monitors. "They all start with one point or two point something."

"Yes?"

"First level, second level. The levels are split into segments of twelve; twelve cameras on each level. There's a separate camera room, probably on the third floor."

He studied the numbers carefully, but his shoulders soon slumped. "Shit. I can't believe this."

"At least we can secure these two levels though, right?" Why was she looking for a bright side? She knew this was a mistake, and now she thought she really should catch the first bus out of here, but she couldn't leave Logan to these bastards, who had already ruined his life once. He'd almost had to kill her to hide her from them, right, and probably paid for that lie at some point? So this was absolutely the least she could do for him.

"How did you know?" He asked. Did he sound suspicious, or just curious? She couldn't read his face, so she wasn't sure.

"Did Logan tell you what I do for a living?"

His brow furrowed, like he didn't get the conversational shift. "No."

She didn't immediately supply a response. She had a feeling he wouldn't see "thief" as a legitimate career option, or a good use of her powers.

Luckily, he took a guess before she settled on a good lie. "Security?"

"Yep, absolutely mate, office security. And there's a place in London that has a set up almost exactly like this." At least that bit was true.

"Do you know how we can override this system, or hack into it? I assume they all work off the same mainframe?"

Oh shit. "It would depend on a lot of things. I'm only familiar with business applications, not military. For one thing, they don't have touch screens."

"Hmm." She wasn't sure if that was for her, or just aimed at the system in general. He tried a few "buttons", called up a menu or two, and finally asked, "What time have we got?"

"Huh?" She glanced at her watch, and tried to remember when Logan said they'd be coming in. "Two minutes, give or take a few seconds."

"Well, I guess I've got time to try something," he sighed, with almost no enthusiasm at all.

She thought about putting down the gun, but then she realized she might need it, and gripped the handle so tight she was sure it was now embedded into her palm. If she ever needed proof she was not cut out to be a commando, she supposed she had it now.

* * *

Although he led the way down, the Sisters wanted to be on point, so he let them, as it seemed pointless - ha! - to argue with them. Still, he was leading them by scent, and leaving Marcus to basically hold Rogue back, as she wanted to take the lead. Luckily, some of his general respect for Marc must have transferred along with his power, because she was generally listening to him.

They encountered no one on their brief trip to the observation room, and no alarms sounded, so he assumed that Srina and Scott had secured the room, a supposition confirmed when the door to the room hissed open as they approached, and Srina peered out at them, her expression somewhere between anxious and exhausted. "We've hit an impasse," she said quietly.

Everybody remained silent until they had filtered in and the door had shut behind them, and then Marc asked, "What's the new shit we're in?"

"I can't access the third level cameras," Scott said, not bothering to look up from the console he was fiddling with. "It has a hell of a firewall, and I can't get anywhere."

"Let me have a look," Marc said, joining him.

"We really don't need to access those cameras, do we?" Helga suggested. "Let's just hit 'em with every fucking thing we got. They got muties on their side? Fine - they show themselves instantly, and we take 'em out. I'm sure we got enough firepower here to take 'em."

Scott looked back enough to scowl at her. "That sounds like suicide."

"No, being here is suicide - for you," she replied tartly.

"You think they'll know your fine green ass is demon on first sight?" Marc replied. "They'll cage you if they can."

"Let 'them try."

"We-"

"-like-"

"-cages."

"Would you two stow it already?" Rogue snapped, rolling her eyes at the Sisters. "Jesus."

"Hey," Logan exclaimed, annoyance making him feel as good as new. "We can bullshit this if we have to."

"How?" Scott asked, sounding almost hostile.

Marc threw up his hands, only one of which now had a glove on it. He took one off on the off chance he had to grab someone and paralyze them - or worse. "This system is fucked. If we had a few hours maybe we could crack it, but it ain't happenin' on our timetable."

"Oh, Logan, just put your claw through it," Rogue interjected impatiently. "That'll shut everything down."

"Not really," Sri said. "It could set off every alarm in the bloody building."

Scott held up his hand, signaling for silence, and wasn't that an act of tragic optimism? "Logan, what do you mean we can bullshit this?"

He pointed at the two soldiers who were laying splayed on the floor, dead to the world thanks to a couple of optic blasts presumably. "Two of us are them. Two of us put on their uniforms, take their key cards, and try and bluff our way down to the third level."

Scott scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "How long will that bluff last? Sixty seconds?"

"We only need to convince them long enough to get access to the third level, that's it."

"The two who go down will be instantly attacked."

"Ooh, pick me!" Rogue insisted.

The way Scott's jaw tensed, he probably wanted to scowl or curse, but didn't bother. "The soldiers are men, Rogue. The two who go down have to be men."

"And one of 'em's me," Logan replied, aware belatedly that he was echoing Rogue's sentiment somewhat - or did she just speak the same thought first? Damn, it was hard sharing a personality.

"No, that hasn't been decided."

"Yeah, Scott, it has. I know these guys, and it's my stupid ass plan anyways. I'm going."

"I guess that makes me number two-o," Marc said, approaching the nearest fallen soldier and pulling off his jacket.

That really ticked off Scott. "Wait just a minute -"

"He's black!" Marc interrupted, pointing at the soldier. "So am I. And you know what they say about us all looking like each other to white people. They'll hardly even notice. But Logan? Yeah, he'll queer the pitch fast."

"Gee, thanks."

"Don't take it wrong, amigo. It's just you don't have regulation hair."

"You guys can have a pissing contest in a moment," Srina interjected. "First of all we have to decide how we get you down there. Didn't you notice the elevator only goes to the first two levels? The third and fourth are locked off; they must be controlled from those levels."

At least Logan had already figured out that part of the plan. "That console has some kind of communication device on it, yeah?"

Scott nodded. "Of course."

"We pretend to be one of these guys, and claim that - what was the name of that guard you absorbed, Rogue?"

"Kevin Mueller."

"We radio the lower levels, tell - Commander's name, Rogue?"

"Alvarez."

"Alvarez that a mutie attacked Mueller, but he was able to subdue him, and we got 'em, but we don't know how long they'll be controllable and we need to bring 'em down right now."

Scott mulled that over a moment, scratching his head as he considered it. "So many damn holes. Why would they buy it?"

Suddenly Saddiq yelled, with great and angry enthusiasm, "Fucking mundanes, get your hands off me!" He then kicked the wall furiously, leaving a large dent. "I'll kill you all, you fucking infidel butchers!" He then faced them, and asked, "Too much?"

"Leave out infidels," Logan suggested. "Otherwise, yeah, good idea. The mutant's raising hell in the background. It should also make the person's voice harder to distinguish."

"But what about us?" Helga aggressively countered. "So three of you get a trip down to the third level - maybe - but if you got an angry mutant prisoner, you will be met in force, and the jig will be up faster than a frat boy getting his first lap dance. What the hell are the rest of us supposed to be doing while the three of you are getting the shit beaten out of you?"

"Could we cut through?" Rogue asked, looking down at the floor.

"Adamantium-"

"-plated-"

"-even if-"

"-they were-"

"-very thin floors-"

"-only Logan could -"

"-cut through them and-"

"-it would take hours."

They were right, of course, but Logan wondered, "How'd you know it's adamantium plate?"

The Weirds smiled at him, pleased that he had asked. "We-"

"-can-"

"-smell it."

But Rogue wasn't ready to give up just yet. "I bet they got something adamantium around here we could use, like a drill or an axe or something."

"We-"

"-know-"

"-how to-"

"-get down-"

"-there with you-"

"-without their noticing-"

"-we vampires are expert-"

"-sneakers."

"And I can go down with you guys and someone else," Sri offered, somewhat half-heartedly. She didn't want to get caught in a firefight, and he couldn't blame her.

"Okay, so we got a plan?" Marc said, slipping on the fallen soldier's jacket. He took off his lone glove and shoved it in his pocket. "Let's get this going."

"No," Scott insisted. "We haven't decided on the prisoner, the one going down with them."

Saddiq looked vaguely surprised. "It's not me?"

An argument briefly ensued, but not for long, as Logan knew, if they were going to be facing a large group of angry, well armed soldiers in close quarters, there was only one person in this room who could guarantee them some breathing room right away.

10

Ama's place was pretty much like he'd last seen it, with its green as grass sky and marble plazas, but as soon as Bob appeared, he realized it was quieter than usual, and seemed emptier - a natural lull, perhaps. Still, it was almost eerie, and he was happy to fill the silence. "I could buy myself a reason, I could sell myself a job," he sang, but more quietly than usual; it was like being in a library. "I could hang myself on treason, for I am my own damn god."

"You sing the weirdest things," Yasha commented.

He found her lounging alone in Ama's hot tub milk bath, visible only from the shoulders up as the milk frothed and steamed around her like the world's biggest espresso. "I know. But if I started singing from the Rogers and Hammerstein oeuvre, I'd have to shoot myself."

"Not a big musical fan?"

"Not really, no. Shocking, isn't it?"

"A bit."

He crouched down beside the tub, actually tempted by the warmth to just go ahead and jump in, but he didn't know Yasha well enough to do such a thing. "Ama about?"

She shrugged, causing an undulation in the surface of the water. "Probably. I think she went after the sylphs for some reason."

"In the woods, huh? Good, 'cause you're really the one I wanted to talk to first."

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Me? Is this about Logan?"

"No. But I was wondering if what you told him about wanting to move on was actually true."

"You mean die? Yeah. There's something around here, though, that just makes torpor set in."

"And Ama likes the company."

She nodded, strands of her dark hair moving in the liquid like tentacles. "I'm not as annoying as the sylphs."

He wondered if there was any way to dance around the question, but even if there was, he didn't think she'd appreciate it. "Your curse is gone, isn't it?"

She didn't even pretend to be surprised. "I think so. But I can hardly get into trouble here, can I?"

"I know. Bit of a bummer."

"A bit. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No. I was going to ask you if you'd do me a favor. But I warn you - it's a suicide mission."

She considered that a moment, staring into the frothy white foam seemingly undergoing mitosis on top of the hot milk, and then glanced up at him with a sly, deadly smile. "Do I get to take someone out along the way?"

Vampires did have their good points at times. Well, depending on your definition of good.

* * *

They bought it.

But with Saddiq raising hell and cursing at the top of his lungs in the background, and Marc sounding completely stressed out and pissed off, how could they not? He put a couple more dents in their walls too, although he really didn't need to; it was probably a personal statement.

Marc found a camouflage patterned hat that he jammed on his head to hide his hair, in case there were cameras in the elevators, monitoring downward traffic for level three. Logan hated it, but he knew it was probably for the best, and pulled the brim down to hide his eyes. If he held his head at the right angle, it might conceal most of his facial hair from a few vantage points as well.

They both put on the sidearms of the soldiers, along with their outer uniforms, and studying the gun, Marc claimed it fired some kind of "new fangled" cartridge. He didn't know what, but was eager to find out, although Scott gave them the "no killing" warning once more, in case they hadn't heard it before.

Everybody knew the plan, and knew their place. Srina and Rogue went into the elevator ahead of them, invisible, as Logan and Marc quickly followed, the prisoner propped up between them, head hanging down as if semi-conscious. They had to cuff him to sell it, but Logan cut the chain connecting the cuffs so there was maybe a half a link holding them together - a good tug and they'd break apart.

The Sisters and the others stood waiting for them to go. The Sisters plan was actually pretty solid: they would pry apart the doors on the second floor - they did have the physical strength - and jump down the shaft. Once they hit the top of the elevator, they'd wait for the shooting to start before crashing in through the top of the elevator car and joining the fray. Even if an alarm on the lower levels signaled a breach in the shaft, they'd be on the floor before anyone could do anything about it. Everybody else would be coming with them, and everybody with them could take the drop.

As soon as the doors slid shut and they started their slow descent, Logan muttered, "We ready?"

"We'd better be," Marc whispered back. "There's no do-overs."

There was a small thud on top of the elevator, but they all managed to ignore it.

Logan kept looking down, shielding his face from direct view, as the elevator came to a slow stop, and the doors hissed open.

Even from his currently limited view, Logan knew they had just been met by a veritable sea of well armed soldiers, far more than they had anticipated.


	6. Part 6

It was a funny thing having a sharp sense of smell. Along with the dozens of people - mostly men - in the hallway before them, he smelled quite clearly, over the scent of aftershaves, tobacco, chewing gum, deodorant, and hair products, a spike of fear; adrenaline like sour apples, sharp and slightly metallic.

They knew something was wrong. They wouldn't even get out of the elevator first.

"Now," Logan hissed, raising his hand to Scott's visor as he raised his head. Scott would normally do the whole visor thing himself, but his hands were cuffed behind him, at least for the moment.

Scott looked up, and Logan pressed the button.

He was only supposed to hold it down for two seconds, as Scott felt that was enough, but Logan wasn't sure about that. Still, a wide beam shot out from his visor and sent a great deal of the soldiers flying on impact, with only those hugging the walls remaining on their feet, and Marc started shooting as those still standing started to fire.

Scott broke his hands free of the cuffs, so Logan lunged for the nearest soldiers, grabbing the raised sidearm of one as he kicked the other in the stomach, and someone was shouting into their radio for immediate "quarantine" as Marc continued to fire his gun and ease out into the corridor, Scott sniping a few here and there with his optic blasts. Rogue was out now too, punching the ones he had shoved aside, and the double team seemed to be working pretty well. She didn't have much of his strength if any at all, but at least she knew the weak spots to go for on each and every Human. Srina must have been out now too, as every now and again there was a thud, and someone went down although their assailant was nowhere to be seen.

More soldiers entered the fray, but by this time the elevator car's ceiling seemed to have caved in, and down jumped the Sisters, followed by Helga and Saddiq, and all dove into the scrum with an enthusiasm that was vaguely disturbing. The funny thing was, the four of them did make excellent backup, as they were giving textbook fighting techniques for anyone watching. Saddiq easily took on two men taller and far heavier, his well honed skills making him a much more potent opponent than they were prepared for, as well as the fact that Saddiq seemed to fight with no emotion whatsoever, like he was a pure combat machine; Helga was almost the opposite, as she poured the same passion she had more for most things into her fighting, tearing into people like they were bread and she was starving, and no one was prepared for the things she could do with that tail of hers; and the Sisters were not only impossibly coordinated, but a combination of Helga's and Saddiq's style, as they reveled in bloodlust, but took people out with cold calculation.

Logan knew he'd taken at least one slug in the side (no big deal; it had passed through him without hitting anything major), and had a minor stab wound in the back, but they were already healing. Scott was limping - maybe he'd taken a ricochet in the leg - but otherwise seemed fine, and had reached the end of the corridor, where he blew open a locked door and took out a few soldiers behind it. Considering how outnumbered and outgunned they technically were, they were doing astonishingly well - unless they had something a hell of a lot better waiting for them on the fourth level, this was going to be a cakewalk.

"Is this all you got?" Marc shouted. He was bleeding too, from an unclear source, but didn't seem too put out by it. He grabbed a soldier who was starting to get up and instantly paralyzed him, making him drop back to the floor like a sack of cement. "C'mon! Don't pussy out on us now!"

The Sisters looked up, presumably at opposite cameras hidden in the wall, and echoed the sentiment. "We're-"

"-hungry."

The Sisters had no blood on them, save for other people's, and they couldn't have looked more cheerful if they tried. If only the watchers on the floor could have known how dangerous and chilling that actually was.

It was then that he heard a hum.

It was an odd noise, deep and thrumming, and he shushed the others so he could hear it better, get a directional fix. Rogue must have gotten some of his hearing too, because she soon asked, "What's that?"

"It's-"

"-everywhere."

The Sisters were right, it was; it was coming through the walls. "Back, get back," he shouted, not sure what was coming or how to stop it. Maybe they'd be safe in the elevator car until they -

A bright light, like a pulse from the heart of the sun, suddenly burst from all around them, and Logan felt it, deep within his brain, like a heated ice pick punching through his cerebellum. And then he didn't feel anything at all.

11

Angel came to with the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth, a terrible - and terribly familiar - thing. He ached all over, and from the grating deep inside, he was sure he'd broken several bones, especially in his ribcage. At least he was dead, and theoretically it shouldn't bother him at all.

He shoved himself up to his knees with a pained groan, and said, "I'm surprised you're not complaining already, Spike." Spike was good at complaining, and had been doing it almost non-stop since he nearly got himself eviscerated by that big raptor looking thing on the lowlands. It hadn't completely healed yet either, and he supposed Spike knew himself that he was going to be a goner sooner rather than later; vampires couldn't get gangrene, but the blood of the demon/dinosaur thing was unpalatable, and there was no way for him to replenish all the blood seeping out the still open wound. He was getting weaker on a daily basis, slower, and Illyria was eager to leave him behind, as he was slowing them down. That caused a lot of nasty arguments between her and Spike, culminating in Spike calling her a "nasty slag", and Illyria threatening to pound him into dinosaur shit. As far as Angel was concerned, they could both stay behind and curse each other out to their hearts content, but if he was to be perfectly honest with himself, only Illyria was going to go the distance - she was a former Old One, after all, and even in her slightly weakened state (she'd have destroyed her human shell if they hadn't weakened her), she was more than a match for the Senior Partners. If they ever bothered to show their faces, or whatever they had.

He was doing little better than Spike. Mainly he was just banged up - broken bones, bruises, internal injuries - but he had some shallow scars on his arm, chest, and face that had just started scabbing over. And he didn't get scabs - he was a vampire! It was either this dimension - and all hell dimensions had their own rules - or the guard demons were toxic in some way, exuding a poison that compromised their ability to heal, and the worse the injury, the harder it was. He just hurt, he knew he could keep going (he'd lived with pain before; he had lived with much worse), but he honestly didn't know how much longer. One good claw slash or bite, and he would be in Spike's position, dying slowly and rather pointlessly, ebbing away.

The toxin - or whatever it was - didn't affect Illyria, and why would it? She was a god - kind of; mostly - and they were just demons, which was the difference between a housecat and sabertooth tiger. That should have comforted him, that long after he and Spike were dead she'd continue roaming the wastes, demolishing everything in her path, but he couldn't forget that technically she was an evil god. She decided to buddy up with them mainly because she hated being a pawn (which is what the Senior Partners had basically made her), and initially she felt actual grief over Wesley's death. But memories of her "human" existence were fading, and he had a feeling that the Partners might be able to make her a deal. After all, right now she was only in this for the bloodshed and the violence; she'd already said, more than once, that she wished she could kill something with more intelligence.

Trying to catch his breath, spitting dirt and blood out of his mouth, he realized that no one had responded to him. "Guys?" He looked around, and saw that he was alone in a very dark cavern. Looking up, he saw a hole in the granite ceiling, at least sixty feet above his head. Even if he was at full strength, he'd never be able to make a jump of that height. But shouldn't the hole have been bigger? Didn't the ground collapse underneath them all?

Maybe it had, and yet they all ended up in different places anyways. Different dimensions, different rules. "Guys," he shouted, climbing painfully to his feet. The stone walls felt slick, as if covered with a thin layer of slime. "Spike, Illyria, can you hear me?" He paused, waiting for a reply or at least a noise, but it never came. "I'm in here!" He figured Illyria would be punching her way through walls soon enough, and he didn't want to get inadvertently flattened.

He saw his sword was still with him, it had embedded itself blade first in the dirt, and he pulled it out, which was harder than it should have been. He was hurting a lot worse than he was willing to admit, but he wasn't going to give up just yet. They had to show themselves sometime - in theory - and he had a feeling they were close, even though he wasn't aware of the passage of time here. Day and night seemed strangely arbitrary, with no balance between them; he had given up trying to count the days, although, if you were to count by sunsets, it had been five days. His body told him it had been months.

He seemed trapped in the cave at first glance, but then he noticed a small seam of pale light bleeding from the wall parallel to him, so he hefted the sword, resting the blade flat against his shoulder, and carefully edge closer, half expecting the wall to burst in on him. It didn't, and as he touched the strangely warm stone, it flaked off in his hands, and collapsed like it was made from sand.

Angel knew by now that you couldn't expect any kind of logic in a Senior Partners' dimension, but he was still surprised to see that the cave wall had fallen away to reveal a lavish and opulent banquet room. The floor looked as if was made with gemstones, polished slabs of rubies and emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, topaz and onyx, set flush with one another, making an oversized mosaic that almost looked like stained glass. The banquet table that was the centerpiece of the room was a long, slender piece of polished mahogany that, judging by the number of chairs, could seat one hundred. A large crystal chandelier hung over it all, made with two hundred crystal prisms in the shapes of tears, reflecting light from some unclear source, fracturing it into a thousand tiny rainbows before they hit the gemstone floor.

A red velvet runner led up three wide stairs, and ultimately to a dais where a throne made entirely of human bones covered in gold sat empty, skeletal hands holding up a red velvet cushion for some evil bastard's prodigious ass. Round rubies and sapphires filled the eye sockets of the skulls that lined the top of the throne, while the baby skulls that made up the end of the arm rests (made of real arms) had glittering bits of amethysts shoved in the holes.

The room was cold, the air oddly clean, and something was making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A feeling of power and … what? No idea. It just made the vampire in him want to cower.

He wanted to believe he had finally made it, but he knew he hadn't - he had been brought here. Someone was tired of him. "Where are you?" He demanded, lowering his sword. His voice echoed slightly, but he knew that was just an illusion. "What have you done -"

Movement in the corner of his eye made him pivot on his heels, aiming the sword at a man across the room, who also held a sword, and looked like death warmed over, and it suddenly struck him that the man looked familiar.

Oh, it was him, wasn't it?

The far sides of the room were covered in floor to ceiling mirrors, and he saw himself reflected multiple times, cut into shards, and he just stared at the image for a moment. His hair stuck out at several angles, matted with blood, and his shirt was in tatters, held together with a few stubborn strands of thread and bloodstains, and the left leg of his pants was barely hanging on, with a huge slash exposing the flesh of his knee. Where was his coat? Didn't he used to have a coat?

He stared at his dirt and blood smeared face for a moment, not sure he even wanted to recognize himself, an then mentally ordered himself to snap out of it. Allowing himself to see his reflection was probably a distraction, a way to throw him off. He forced himself to turn away, and made himself finish his thought. "Where are they? What have you done to them? If you've hurt them -"

That got a response. "You'll what? Kill me like you were planning to in the first place? I'm perfectly petrified."

He looked around, but he was still alone in here, visually at any rate. "You must be; you're not here."

"You're not looking hard enough."

He continued to look around, and then he saw him; he was in the mirror on the far side, a natty looking man with white hair and black eyes, wearing a double breasted tweed suit that was straddling the line between debonair and stuffy. In fact, he looked oddly like Peter Cook, which made him pause. Had Peter Cook been evil? He couldn't remember that.

Angel lifted his sword, prepared to throw it, but he instantly froze - it was like he'd been grabbed in an invisible fist. He was glad he didn't have to breathe, because the pressure on his chest was incredible; he could feel his broken ribs grinding together like worry beads.

The Senior Partner chuckled, but without any warmth. "Did you really think you could even hurt me in my own domain, insect? What is it with you little nothings thinking you can take on the great machines? Because you have a head full of righteous anger, and are dwelling on the side of angels - no pun intended - you think that's enough? Are you honestly that stupid, or just misguided optimists?"

"I've made it this far," he hissed through gritted teeth. It was the closest he could come to talking with an invisible rhino standing on his chest.

The Senior walked straight out of the mirror and across the dais, leaving a static reflection behind. "And why do you think that is?"

"I don't care. What have you done to Spike and Illyria?"

He scoffed, taking a seat on his throne of bones. "My dear boy, you should be old enough to understand that when you lead your people on a suicide mission, you can't suddenly be concerned about their well being."

"Answer the question."

"Why should I? You haven't answered mine. But I'll do that for you. You've gotten this far because you have some of our blood, some of the Powers power, and because I was curious to see how long you and the two misfits you brought with you could actually last. Now the three of you made a great reality show, let me tell you."

Some of their blood? Oh, right, he drank a little blood of a Senior's minion before he left Earth. He had no idea it was extant after all this time. He had the power of the Powers, though? That was news to him. But if he had some of their power, why wasn't he able to make it work for him? "I will kill you."

He gave him a small, patronizing smile. "No, you won't."

Angel was thrown to his knees, the gemstones hard enough to send electric shocks of pain through his body (as if he needed any more). The sword dropped from his hand as it felt like his fingers snapped, the bones spontaneously cracking under strain, and he swallowed a scream along with a fresh gout of blood in his mouth. His pain was almost radiant, heating cold flesh and imbuing itself into the floor, as it felt like something hit him in the back and sent him sprawling face first.

"I could crush you like an ant, you know," the anti-Cook said conversationally. "You're just lucky we're not done with you yet."

He spit out blood, not sure where it was coming from, and chagrined that it made him hungry. He hadn't eaten since he'd left Earth - none of the beings here had palatable blood - and he was starving, so much so that he'd started to dream longingly of rats. "What -" He could barely talk; it felt like someone was stepping on his throat. "What do you mean?"

"You owe us, Angel. Did you think you did enough to live up to your part of the bargain? Not even close. And add to that the inconvenience you caused us. Illyria is by all right one of ours, and we'll get her back easily enough - or she will die, simple as that - but you took out our Los Angeles station. Tsk tsk, bad dog, and all that rot. But you will help us rebuild … or should I say Angelus will? Because you sold us your soul, Angel, and we intend to collect."

His head was throbbing so much he felt he had a pulse. "No," he croaked, trying to push himself up to his knees. But he couldn't do it, the pressure pushing him down was too great, and he was too weak.

"Oh, come on! It's just us supernatural beings here, no Humans to con. We both know that when a vampire possesses a Human, it doesn't come with a personality; vampires are rather dreary, single minded things. A vampire takes on and enhances the core personality, makes the essence come to the surface without such deceits as restraint -"

"No," he insisted, struggling hard to push himself up. Muscles were tearing and tendons were shrieking, but he didn't care. He couldn't listen to this anymore, he couldn't -

_(What if it was true? Wasn't he always afraid it was?)_

- just do nothing while this thing stole his soul.

"- a soul is, at best, a leash on a dog; but the dog was there before the leash. You know that by now. You know who and what you were -"

"No."

"- and what you always have been, before, during, and after. Liam O'Connor, you were never anything but a selfish, venal, manipulative sadist -"

"No."

"- cruel in your heart long before the demon ever brought it out. You think you can lie to me? I'm a god - I'm your god - and I know everything there is to know about your kind. I know the black recesses of your mind, the icy canyons of your dead heart … and you were a dead thing long before a vampire ever took you."

"No!" He screamed, finally shoving himself up to his feet, ready to charge the stairs and rip that fucker's throat out -

- and he was shocked cold by the presence of dozens of people around him, between him and the Senior Partner. Not dozens; hundreds, possibly thousands, all familiar.

The people he had killed.

Humans and demons alike, the people he had vamped, the ones he fed off of, the ones he killed simply for the holy hell of it; the ones he had killed as an evil vampire and as a tormented one, the ones who had simply died for being around him. There were so many the room had widened itself to accommodate them all, and if he had any breath, he'd have lost it. He heard a strange noise, a kind of swallowed moan, and only realized it had come from him after the fact. Children - oh god, had he actually killed that many children? - stood on the steps, otherwise so small as to get swallowed by the massive crowd, the sea of faces, the ocean of names and beings long forgotten, half remembered, or nameless; a flood of doomed and damned souls. He thought he might actually collapse, he felt gut shot looking at their pleading eyes, their faces neutral or sad, fearful or angry, and when two of them grabbed his arms - ironically Wesley and Doyle, arguably his closest friends of recent years, both struck down horribly while working with him - he was almost grateful that he didn't have to keep supporting himself.

He found himself searching the faces, putting names to them all. His parents over there, his sister on the stairs, Jenny, Cordelia, and Fred behind him, Gunn and Lindsay backing up Wesley, Darla and Dru standing beside the throne, Dru's sisters and the rest of her family near the base of the stairs, several squadrons of vampires he had made or used as minions but had never really learned the names of or had simply forgotten, slayers he had killed in his time … it was too much.

He closed his eyes, shook his head, and said, "I know what you're doing, and it's not going to work. They aren't here, they aren't real -"

"Oh, we're real all right," Doyle said, his voice pitch perfect enough to make his stomach clench. "This evil bastard was nice enough to let us come back, so we could thank you for everythin' you've ever done for us."

_They aren't real, Angel mentally told himself. They're simulacrums; he's preying on your guilt. He knew this, he believed it. So why wasn't it working?_

"You have nothing to say to us?" Wesley asked archly.

"I knew he was death the first time I saw him," Dru said, but her voice was oddly fragile, without its singsong cadence; it was the voice of Dru as a Human, before … before he had killed her. "But they didn't believe me. They never believed me when I told them what I saw, not until it was too late."

"I'm - I'm sorry," he whispered, afraid to open his eyes and see all their faces. God, there were so many. He had no idea …

"You're sorry?" Wesley repeated in disbelief. "You slaughtered us all, and you're _sorry_?"

He didn't know who threw the first punch. All he knew was that it was followed by a cascade of blows, punches and kicks, as the Human tide turned on him in rage. He knew he should fight back, try and get some breathing room, but there were so many he was lost instantly, and besides, he wasn't sure he had the will to fight them. Hadn't he hurt them enough already? (_But they weren't real! They couldn't be real!)_

When he felt the tears start rolling down his cheeks, he convinced himself they were from pain alone.

12

He knew, when he felt something odd on his face, that something had gone horribly wrong.

The last thing he remembered was … oh yeah, that flash of light. His leg still ached, and Scott wasn't sure if he had been shot there or stabbed or just hurt by a piece of flying debris; he didn't bother to look, figuring he'd do better by going forward without pausing to see how bad it actually was. Denial probably wasn't a good thing to utilize in a fight, but sometimes you were better off not knowing if your leg was hanging on by a strand or not.

He opened his eyes to discover he was no longer wearing his visor, but goggles not unlike the ones he slept in, but bulkier. He was also strapped into what seemed to be a dentist's chair, slightly modified. His wrists were held down to the arm of the chair by hard plastic straps, possibly variations of the plastic cuffs cops sometimes used, and although his legs were free, the chair itself was bolted down to the floor. There seemed to be some sort of apparatus over his head, machinery hanging down from the ceiling, but the room was poorly lit and it was mostly behind him, so he couldn't really see what it was. He honestly hoped it was a dentist's drill.

What he could see was a metal desk in front of him, the best lit thing in the room, behind which sat an Asian woman doing - of all things - paperwork. She was reasonably young, maybe early thirties, her black hair razor cut to a length so short it was nearly a buzz cut, but she was still an attractive woman, in a severe sort of way. She barely glanced up at him before resuming scribbling on forms. "I thought you were smarter than this, Cyclops."

"You'd be surprised what someone could talk you into. And don't call me that." His right leg still throbbed pretty steadily in a location just north of the knee, but much of the blood on his leg felt cold and itchy, so he assumed that was a good sign. "Where are the others?"

"That depends," she said cryptically, and then finally deigned to look up from her paperwork. "You knew there were hypersonic tones that could render a person unconscious, yes? We've been experimenting with special frequency light pulses that seem to overload the optic nerves and cause the brain to … well, shut down, for lack of a better term. To be safe, we used both. We didn't know if the goggles you two wore would cut down on the effects of the light or not, and besides, it was kind of amusing to hit Wolverine with both."

'You two'? She must have meant Marcus, and he hated the idea of ever being lumped in with him. "Why?"

"Imagine it: a hypersonic frequency will render a normal person instantly unconscious. Just think what it will do to a man with above average senses." She chuckled to herself as she turned her attention back to her paperwork. "He had a seizure, and we're certain we shattered at least one of his eardrums. Oh, he'll heal, but he's down for a while. Let's see that son of a bitch adapt to that."

Scott was honestly appalled, not so much what they did to Logan as the fact that she seemed to genuinely enjoy it. If she looked up she would have seen his sneer, but she wasn't paying attention to him. "Who the hell are you?"

She flipped a sheet over, adding it to a small but growing pile on the right side of her desk. "Just call me Control."

"Wasn't there a guy with that name?"

"It's not so much a name as it is a title."

"So you're the new terror czar, is that it?"

She looked up at him and smiled, but it was a cold, almost leering grin that wouldn't have been out of place on a Sister. "You brought some very interesting specimens with you this time. That boy was incredibly impressive; he could have been one of ours. His skin appears impenetrable, so am I right in assuming he's one of the genetic constructs of Eden Biotechnics?"

If there was an implied threat there it was oblique, but just the fact that she was speaking about Saddiq was bad enough. "You hurt those kids and I will kill you."

Her smile grew wider, more patronizing. "You don't kill, Cyclops. Well, not without prodding."

He felt a cold shock through his system, an unwelcome reminder of what they made him do the last time they got a hold of him, and he hated her; he loathed her with such a fiery passion he thought if he could get loose, he would throttle her with his bare hands. But he told himself she was trying to make him upset, trying to unbalance him, and he couldn't let her. If he was going to help the others at all, he had to keep his cool, not be manipulated by this cold blooded bitch. He swallowed his rage, and said, as emotionlessly as possible, "So where are the telepaths? I don't feel brainwashed yet."

She studied him, her brown eyes betraying a hint of amusement, and then said, "Those twin girls are interesting too. Very impressive fighters - martial artists, I'm guessing. Are they telepathic? What is the nature of their mutation? They seem to register as dead. Did you know this?"

"They weren't dead when we came here." The Sisters! Didn't Angel manage to break Logan out of an Organization base once? Maybe that's why Logan really wanted to bring them - in case the shit really hit the fan, they still had vampires on the inside, wild cards, which never sounded like a good thing. Maybe he should have given Logan more credit.

Control was not answering a single one of his questions. Clearly she wanted to fuck with his head; he refused to give her the satisfaction. She'd had enough watching Logan writhe in pain. "And an invisible person! Thank you so much for that. We used to have one, you know, but he disappeared on us. It sounds like a joke, but bless him, he was always a coward, and when the opportunity came to leave, he took it. And it really is hard to find an invisible man in a crowd."

"So this is this portion of the proceedings where you just talk at me, huh? Torture by boredom? Why don't you just turn C-Span? I guarantee I'll be foaming at the mouth within the hour."

She gazed at him steadily, that small smile firmly locked in place. "You think I don't know you're terrified? There's no need for false bravado, Cyclops. It's just us."

"And why is that? Because Logan's too injured to be much fun?"

"Interesting. Even you believe you should be playing second fiddle to him?"

"That's not what -" He stopped himself, but not in time. Shit, he just stumbled into one of her traps. Maybe he could still work his way out of it.

Her smiled became tighter, self-satisfied. "What do you think you know about Wolverine? I'm curious."

"You people played Operation - The Home Game on him, and he's an asshole."

"You left off the part about him being a killer, Cyclops. Unlike you, he never needed brainwashing for that."

"Whatever. Is there a point to this?"

"Yes, a rather important one." She searched on her desk for something, finally pulling out a plain manila folder. "You've been sleeping with the enemy - metaphorically speaking - for all this time. Doesn't it bother you?"

"You're my enemy, and we've only just met." He tried his wrist restraints, but they were far too tight. He wondered if there was another way out of this. How well had they covered all their bases?

"You know Wolverine specifically hunted your kind, but are you aware he destroyed your life long before you met him?"

He stared back at her through the reddish haze of the goggles, wondering why the damn things were so bulky. Were they that worried that his beams would break them? "We all know he's a home wrecker, but I think you're overstating the case."

"Am I really? Poor Cyclops, orphaned so young." She opened the folder and held it out towards him, and his heart skipped a beat as he saw, paper clipped to the inside of it were two big black and white head shots of his parents, looking frighteningly young. "Christopher Summers, and Doctor Allison Hammond-Summers." She let him look at the photos for a minute, then closed the file. He kept his face neutral, hating her more than he thought was humanly possible. "Are you aware Wolverine killed them both?"


	7. Part 7

He just stared at her, once again appalled, but this time at her gall. "How stupid do you think I am? Newsflash, Control - my parents died in a plane crash. Are you going to try and convince me he shot them down with a surface to air missile?"

"He hardly needed to if he sabotaged the plane, Cyclops." She closed the file and slid it beneath a pile of papers, letting the far corner stick out.

"It was mechanical failure. It happened to a lot of those model Cessna's, three others in that year, in fact. Are you going to tell me Logan hunted out other Cessnas of the same make, and did the exact same thing to them for cover?" He chuckled and shook his head. "Pathetic. If you're going to try and bullshit me, do me the favor of doing your homework first." As he had. When he was a teenager - before his mutation had erupted - he poured obsessively over the details of his parents death; there was nothing he didn't know about it. She had picked the wrong topic to exploit.

Her gaze remained cool, and she folded her hands together neatly on her desktop. "Who issues those safety statistics?"

It took him a moment, but he could see where she was going with this. The government issued these facts, meaning they made it up as a general cover. He shook his head again, and the side of his clunky safety goggles hit the headrest of his chair. Wasn't that interesting? "Making up easily verifiable data to cover a single act of sabotage? This isn't the X-Files; I'm not going to buy it."

"I understand you not -"

"No, lady, listen to me. The entire Organization is full of shit, and like quality fertilizer, you can't wait to spread it around. I don't think you even remember how to speak the truth anymore, if you were ever able to. I will never believe a single thing that falls out of your mouth. My parents died in a stupid plane crash; no one caused it, it just happened. They weren't mutants either, just a charter pilot and a pediatrician, and there's no bullshit story large enough to explain why the Organization would be so interested in them as to send Logan to Anchorage to sabotage a puddle jumper." He realized he was issuing a diatribe, his voice going up in volume, but he decided he was perfectly okay with losing some of his temper right now. "If the point is to make me hate him, hey, I'm never going to like the guy. But if he did something bad to me and mine while working for you … guess what, so did I. So I guess that makes it all your fault."

She waited a long moment, then asked, "Are you done?"

"Are you?" He shot back.

Just from the look in her eyes, he knew he was in for something major - maybe she'd even leave the safety of her desk and come hit him - but suddenly she cocked her head oddly, as if she heard something he didn't. She brought a hand to her right ear, and suddenly brought up a thin black object, which she attached to it, bringing it down until it was almost level with her mouth. She had an earpiece radio in her ear, and now she could communicate with them instead of passively listening. "What is it?" She snapped, turning her attention back to her paperwork.

Since her attention was elsewhere, he turned his head, judging how much clearance he had. The goggles were especially heavy in the front - could he work with that? He had to crane his neck until he could feel the muscles straining, but he was able to touch the headrest of the chair, wedge the side of his goggles between it and his face. Was that enough? Could he get any leverage from this angle without snapping his own neck?

He kept an eye on her as she said curtly, "He could have deactivated his transponder and gone out for a smoke. If you find him, you have my permission to shoot him." She angrily flicked back the mike portion of the device, keeping it attached but inactive, and Scott was already staring at her, feigning boredom. Her face became one of studied neutrality, and she folded her hands again, although he now got the impression she was doing that simply because she didn't know what else to do with her hands. "So, is there any chance you'll tell me if you came with back up?"

One of two things had happened: they had discovered Mueller AWOL finally (and presumably, as soon as he regained consciousness, he ran screaming away from here; he would if the Sisters bit him),or someone else had just dropped off the grid - someone inside.

Someone was loose. Or _someones_.

He couldn't suppress his smile. "What would you do if I said it was Bob?"

She glanced down at her paperwork. "Bob? Oh, do you mean the reality warper?" She kept her expression perfectly neutral, but he saw a muscle in her jaw twitch.

"Is that what you call him? Hmm."

She gave him a dirty look for that, and he tried very hard to cover the fact that he was enjoying it. "What does he call his mutation?"

"He doesn't call it anything. It's just what he does."

"What do you call it?"

"Nothing. Why would I? I don't even like him."

"In that case, perhaps you wouldn't mind filling out our information on him."

This was just too damn good. She had her poker face on, but Bob was the right name to drop, as he had unnerved her. She pulled out a sheet of paper, and said, "Our information on him is highly limited. What we were able to confirm is that he appears to be an Australian man in his late twenties to early thirties, who has a projected power level of ten, which is unheard of, especially in a reality warper. His powers would verge on god like if this was actually true."

"Wow, you nailed it. I'm impressed."

Her dark brows knit together in consternation. "You're saying he's a level ten."

"I'm saying you probably don't have a scale that could measure him. But feel free to try and capture him at any time; in fact, you should really make that your top priority. Forget us; just think what you could do if you had Bob."

She glowered at him, aware he was encouraging her to basically commit suicide, and then she turned her head sharply to one side, listening to something on her earpiece, and flicked the mike back into place. "What?"

He couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but just her tone of voice told him that the shit had hit the fan. And wasn't that just a damn shame?

_Minutes Before _

There was something about them that was wrong.

Of course that was true of any mutant, but with some it was far more subtle than others, and that was the case here. Except, of course, they were identical twins, which was always freaky in and of itself; the mutancy was just another problem, like having hives on top of your boils.

Kiernan scratched his head, looking at the twin girls strapped down side by side on the gurneys, and said, "I really think they're dead, Greg."

Amundson made a rude noise with his lips, continuing to gaze at the monitors on the far side of the room, as if they were going to tell him any second now something worthwhile. "Robinson said it's part of their mutation. They mask their vital signs from scanners."

"But, uh, they have no pulse, they're as cold as ice, and they don't look like they're breathing." And he'd been staring at their chests for a full ten minutes; if there had been movement, he was sure he would have seen it.

"Can't fall for that."

"Fall for that?" he repeated in disbelief. "What, you think they're holding their breath?"

"We've had reports of dead mutants before who didn't turn out to be dead. Wolverine, for example."

"He was lost in an explosion. He wasn't lying on a table not breathing. Want me to go get his vital sign readings and bring them back?"

"Whatever floats your boat. We're supposed to keep an eye on 'em, and that's what we're gonna do."

Kiernan shook his head and sighed, glancing back at the twins. They were very young, sixteen maybe, with skin so pale it was almost luminous, making their chestnut hair look warm and vibrant by contrast. Their lips were oddly pale though, weren't they? Not quite blue, but a bloodless pink that was quite nearly an off shade of white. They looked not just dead but frozen solid, and he knew just by trying to get a pulse earlier that their skin felt almost frostbitten with cold. Nothing alive could be that cold.

A burst of static from the comm made him jump, and he turned back just as he heard a voice start to say, "We n-" before being swallowed by a harsh crackle of static.

Amundson frowned, and hit the call button. "Swenson, is that you? What is it?"

He waited, but there was nothing but static as a response. Amundson quickly shifted frequencies, and said, "Mitchell, this Amundson down in 4-Delta. I think Swenson's having radio problems."

"Gotcha," Mitchell drawled, not sounding overly concerned. After a moment, he said, "Huh."

Kiernan's stomach suddenly clenched. Hearing a "Huh" around here was never good. "What?" Amundson wondered.

"His transponder's not working either."

Oh yeah, that wasn't good. Amundson unconsciously put a hand on his sidearm as he asked, "Where was he?"

"4-Omicron. Look, you wanna go check it out? I'll inform Control."

"I'm on it." He broke the connection and started heading for the door.

"Wait," Kiernan exclaimed, making him pause. "You're not gonna just leave me here with ... them, are you?"

Amundson gave him a harsh look that threatened to burn its way through the back of his skull. "Holy shit, man. You're afraid of a couple of girls?" His grin was leering and savage.

"N-no, it's just that -"

But Amundson didn't give him time to explain. He shook his head and turned away, running his new key card through the slot to open the door.

He had just started through the door when something looped around his neck, and jerked it to one side, snapping it with a sickening, violent crack.

Kiernan reached for his sidearm as an arm blocked the door to keep it from closing, but as his hand found the butt of his pistol, an ice cold - and far too strong - hand covered his.

He could feel them behind him, radiating chill like a freezer, and it was all he could do to keep from pissing his pants. "Nice-"

"-restraints-" they said, one in one ear and the other in the other.

"-but not -"

"-nearly restrainty-"

"-enough."

The green woman forced her was inside, and just as he remembered his radio, he saw it held before in him in a small, pale hand. She then made a fist, crushing the radio into a fine metallic powder with virtually supernatural strength, and he thought he might faint.

"They always forget to restrain the tail," the green woman said, possibly to the twins. He noticed she was holding one of their guns in her left hand, but she wasn't aiming it at him.

"Humans-"

"-what-"

"-can you-"

"-do?" There was a brief pause before they continued. "Besides-"

"-eat-"

"-them."

That was a joke, right?

The green woman just rolled her shoulders, a half-hearted shrug, as she turned her attention to the monitors and the control panel. "Don't eat 'im just yet, we may need him."

"Spoil-"

"-sport." They seemed genuinely disappointed. He didn't know how much longer he was going to be able to control his bladder.

There was something disgusting in the way the green woman twitched her tail like a cat; hell, it was disgusting she had a tail at all. But as he felt the cold, insanely strong hands of the girls on his shoulders, he felt oddly grateful that she was here, even though she had just killed Greg, because he had the sinking feeling the girls would really enjoy killing him as soon as they had the chance. Frankly, better Greg than him.

When the green woman turned to face him, he remembered once seeing a green woman on Star Trek as a kid. That one had no tail, and seemed sexy and docile. Would it have killed her to be docile? "Wanna live, soldier boy?" She asked.

He swallowed hard, nodded vigorously. He knew he was never supposed to capitulate to mutants, but he had a sneaking feeling these weren't mutants but things classified in the secret files 'NMHOU', or 'nimhows' - '_non-mutant humanoids otherwise unspecified'_. No one talked about that much, and few people believed it, because if they weren't mutants, what the fuck were they?

"You're gonna tell me where everyone else is being held."

He shook his head desperately, and said, "I don't know exact locations. They don't tell us in case … well, in case of things like this."

The green woman scowled at him, her dark green eyes burning like suns, and asked, "Is he telling the truth?"

"Yes-"

"-he's-"

"-terrified."

Her tail continued to twitch behind her, and it made him nervous. She broke Greg's neck with her tail, didn't she? So it was more like a lemur's or a possum's tail than a cat's; she could actually use it for things. "Fine. Where's the camera control room for these levels?"

"What?"

The grip of cold hands on his shoulders tightened. "We-"

"-know-"

"-you heard."

He swallowed hard, feeling a panic attack coming on, blooming in his chest like a slow motion shockwave. "D-down the h-hall, 4-zeta. On the right."

She scratched her head, staring straight through him as she mulled that over. "If main power is cut, what's the time lag between it and the emergency generators kicking in?"

Was he selling them all out? He imagined he was, but right now there were only three of them loose, and three beings weren't enough to take over a base as populated and prepared as this. Mitchell must have alerted the whole building by now. He just had to last until help arrived. "Uh, about t-twenty seconds."

Her eyes flicked to the girls behind him. "Can you get into the control room and neutralize whoever's there in twenty seconds?"

"We-"

"-could-"

"-do it-"

"- in ten."

"Don't get cocky." The green woman suddenly grabbed him by the collar of his uniform jacket, and her grip was like iron. "Now, boy-o, you're gonna help me cut the power."

He licked his dry lips, and asked, with more courage than he certainly felt, "What if I don't?"

She nodded her head in the direction of the twins. "I let them play with you."

"Yes-"

"-please."

He didn't think he was ever going to have a twins fantasy ever again in his entire life, assuming he lived through the next several minutes.

13

Logic would dictate that once you got to a certain pain threshold, you would pass out. But logic, as it turned out, was just another liar.

Angel felt bruised inside and out, stomped flat, a loose bag of flesh full of broken glass. He'd been gagging on his own blood for the last few minutes - if minutes had passed. He didn't know; it could have been minutes, it could have been years. Time was already fucked up in this place anyways.

Several members of the angry mob picked him up and lifted him over their heads, like he was a body surfer in a mosh pit. But they didn't pass him around, they just held him up, and he knew why: they were showing the Senior Partner their handy work. He would have moved, fought back or simply slipped out of their grasp, but it hurt to just exist at this point.

"What a whipped dog you are," the Partner scoffed dismissively. "You couldn't even put up a fight."

He tried to laugh, but the best he could do was cough up a little blood. "No good to you then, am I?"

"Not with a guilt complex, no. But that can be fixed."

He could still feel tears on his face, but now they were liberally diluted with blood, and pain was probably the reason his eyes were still watering this time. "If you know me like you claim to, you'd realize why you never want a pit bull like Angelus working for you. He will screw you over and sell you out the first chance he gets. If he can't run the show, he will ruin it. He is egotistical and mephistophelean - you know, your usual charmer, kind of like you."

"Which you should know, since it's your true face."

He closed his eyes and swallowed back another gout of blood, but he hurt so much he couldn't hurt anymore. "No."

"What was that you gurgled?"

"I said no." He opened his eyes again, a spark of anger giving him the courage to do at least that. "I have met men with souls who do evils anyways - I have killed some. A soul is not enough. When I was Human, I wouldn't have won any prizes as a humanitarian, but I didn't go out of my way to hurt anyone; it never occurred to me to kill someone because I was bored."

"No, you got drunk and whored around, pausing for fist fights and vomiting."

"None of which makes me a killer. A flawed Human being, a disappointment to my family, even a waste of space? Sure. But not that. Being a loser is not the same as being a butcher, and it never will be. What do you want me to say? That I was a lousy Human being, that I was a fuck up before the term was even invented, that if I was born some two centuries later I would have been just another frat boy at some Midwestern party college? Fine, yes - I deserved to lose my humanity because I was such a poor excuse for a Human. But I was never a born killer, and I will not take the blame for the actions of this bastard demon inside of me, who deserves all the shit you can throw at him."

The Partner applauded lazily, imperiously arching an eyebrow. "Bravo. What do they say on those dreadful American talk shows? 'You go, girl'. Hate to break it to you, Liam, but you don't exist anymore. You're aware of that, aren't you?"

"Why do you think I changed my name?"

"Ah, I see. Neither Liam nor Angelus, just Angel. Not very inventive."

"It's good enough."

"Yes, but you see the flaw, don't you? You're a hybrid. The demon can survive without you, but you can't survive without it. Without the demon, you're half a being."

"I'll live."

"Will you? You're not even alive now."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I? I'm not so sure about that." He sighed dramatically, and began to say, "I hope this little glimmer of self-awareness has been cathartic for you, be -" He suddenly looked violently towards the distance, and snarled, "What the hell is that?"

Previously nonexistent doors of the banquet hall burst open, and Angel heard without seeing (he couldn't see anything from this angle) several things whoosh through the air, followed by several dull thuds - something slamming hard into meat.

Chaos ensued, much screaming, and the Partner yelled, in a basso profundo so deep it would have made James Earl Jones weep like a little girl, "How dare you violate my space!"

The noises didn't stop, and the crowd finally dropped him unceremoniously, and hitting the gemstone floor the second time, he saw stars and wondered if the Partner had put in this floor specifically just to make it extra unpleasant for anyone who happened to fall.

When he could see again, he saw, even from his awkward angle, several of the people around suddenly dissolve into black mist, curls of smoke like energy that wafted up that dissipated in the atmosphere. He was watching as Doyle took a silver disc in the chest, and exploded into black.

"Who the hell are you?" the Partner snapped, sounding offended.

"I'm Lady Blood," came the surprising reply. "On the Earth plane, I'm the vampire equivalent of a rock star - I'm surprised you don't know me." He could see her now, through, the haze of black smoke. She wore a black leather cat suit, something that wouldn't have been out of place in Emma Peel's closet, and wore bandoleers full of throwing stars crisscrossed over her torso, while she wore sabers in gleaming scabbards on both hips, with the hilt of a much bigger sword sticking out over her left shoulder. "Ammit sends her love." With that, she lobbed a handful of throwing stars in his direction.

"You fucking bitch." The stars seemed to dissolve as soon as they came within a foot of him, but Yasha continued darting around the room like a deranged mouse, tossing out throwing stars with enviable accuracy and thinning out the dead of his mind at a rapid pace. Ammit was the death goddess that Yasha had ended up with, he remembered that, and he knew she must have done something to the weapons she was using (death goddess, the dead were her charges; perhaps she was simply calling them home) to make them so instantly effective. "Tell Ammit to go to her brother's hell."

He waved his hand and Yasha crumpled if hit, sliding across the floor until she collided with him, unwelcome new pain. Angel didn't understand why she would help him, why Ammit would even care, unless she had a grudge against the Partners (possible - gods had many levels of soap operas going on, and it was a full time job trying to keep track of them all), or … someone else had asked them to get involved.

Yasha rolled over with a groan, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth, but he realized up close he could smell god on her. Not just Ammit, although it was more than probable that was the odd dead leaf and ozone smell emanating from her; he could also smell Bob on her, a scent like blood and clean water. She looked him straight in the eye, and he heard a clink against the floor, her knives bumping against the jeweled floor, but also something hot fell against him arm, smoldering like an ember. "In the heart," she whispered under her breath. "All the way through; it won't work otherwise."

Before he could ask, she jumped back up to her feet and pulled out her sword, continuing the assault against the remaining specters, who were helpless against her; she cut them down like reeds. Angel surreptitiously palmed the long, slender knife she'd given him, sliding it up his sleeve in spite of the fact that it burned his skin. Something more than simply blessed; something about this knife was almost unbearably toxic, like the heart of the sun had been encased inside the metal.

"Get the hell out of my world," the Partner roared.

"Eat me, ugly," she replied, throwing one of her sabers. It punched through his throat, a direct hit.

But it did no appreciable damage. His black eyes roiled with fury, and he pulled the sword out of his throat, the skin sealing over instantaneously, not even losing a drop of blood. It must have been an expression of his fury, because the saber burst into black flame, dissolving like wood. "Die," he roared.

His rage was unfocused, and everything between him and Yasha burst into black particulates, while Yasha herself went up in a hot, brief black flame; not even dust was left behind as it consumed her whole.

The Partner turned his burning eyes on him. "Do you have something _you_ want to try, Angel?"


	8. Part 8

"You didn't have to kill her," he said, shifting onto his side in preparation for getting up. He felt completely broken inside, shattered, which wouldn't kill him - and the Partner had to know that - but it would make it difficult to stand and move. Why did Yasha give him the knife? He didn't think he could use it, even if he did get close enough.

"Says the mass murderer."

"If I'm a mass murderer, why are you still alive?" He shoved himself up to his knees, and instantly regretted it, as he felt like he might be sick. Although there was a certain irony in a vampire vomiting blood, why did the vampire in question have to be him?

The Partner chuckled, but in a humorless way that made him sound like a villain in a bad spy movie. "You'd kill me if you could, and you know it. But who's the god here?"

And a smug god at that. He waited for his stomach to settle down before he attempted to move, hoping the sleeve of his shirt didn't have any obvious rips in it - wouldn't it have been embarrassing if the knife simply fell out? "What does Ammit have against you?"

He waved his hand dismissively, moving back towards his throne. "I have no idea, I don't bother with the old gods. I assume Bob put her up to it, the moron. Like sending in a charged proxy could ever work."

"Bob?" He already knew he was involved, he smelled him on Yasha, but he decided to play dumb and dazed. "You know him?"

He sighed dramatically, like he had just asked about him his cousin in prison. "Sadly. Who doesn't? He is a pest on any plane."

"Well, I agree with that."

"But he has a special interest in you."

Angel staggered to his feet, and had to lock his legs to make sure he didn't fall over. In fact, he wasn't sure he was going to stay upright for a significant length of time. When he finally looked at the anti-Cook, he felt slightly seasick. "Does he? I don't know why …"

"Because his ex-people chose to use you as their pawn, I suppose. Perhaps he thinks he can use the rescuing of you to get back in their good graces."

"How? I thought the Powers had washed their hands of me."

"Most likely, they're terribly fickle, but Bob isn't known for his realism or common sense. You should feel special."

Angel wanted to laugh, but didn't have the strength. "Oh yeah, I feel real special."

The Partner was looking at him in a way he didn't like, one eyebrow raised, examining him like a two headed bug he'd just found in his soup. "That was just the first move."

"What?"

"Bob is stupid, but he's not that stupid. He had to know sending a super powered proxy wouldn't be enough. It had to have been a test."

Again, playing dumb was the only friend he had right now. "A test of what?"

"My patience, mainly. He knows he can't directly breach my realm without getting instantly obliterated, so he must be stalling for time. What could he be up to?" He tapped his forehead like it might help his thought processes, but not for long. "He has too many connections among the old gods. Nobody too worrisome. Oh, there's no trying to figure out how that lunatic thinks; it'll make your head explode. But I know there's something he can't do, no matter who he chooses to send in his place."

The Partner was smiling now, and it made his skin instinctively crawl. He knew he'd regret asking, but how could he not? "What?"

"Resurrect the dead. That's the providence of death gods, and my people."

Angel shrugged, not sure where he was going with this, unless this was his explanation for killing Yasha. "I'm already dead."

"Yes, in one sense of the word, but you could be deader."

"Wh-" he barely got the first syllable out before the Partner made an odd gesture, curling his hand to his chest, and Angel felt him slingshot across the room towards him, so fast he almost lost consciousness. He thought he was going to impact him, but he stopped just inches from him, and Angel had just enough time to realize that now was his chance when the Partner punched him in the chest.

No, not in the chest - through.

The pain was so overwhelming and indescribable it was like his body just shut down whatever nerves he had left, so the pain was followed quickly by a terrible hollow numbness. There was nothing but a distant tearing sensation as he ripped his hand out of his chest, and Angel instantly collapsed, his legs unwilling to hold him up.

Only after he hit the floor did the hideous, gnawing burning start.

The Partner was holding something in his hand, and Angel honestly didn't know what it was, although it looked like a gray chunk of flesh … oh hell no. He couldn't have been … was he holding his heart in hi s hand? "You things die without that, yes?" He said, tossing it away over his shoulder. "Well now, whatever half-assed, idiot plan Bob has, it's too late for you. You're going to die, Angel. The only question is, is it permanent, or do you come back as Angelus? I bet you can't wait to find out."

Angel could feel it, the cold hollow inside his chest, the open wound burning as if poisoned, and he swallowed hard, trying to muster whatever strength he had left.

So his fate was sealed. Fine, he could deal with that. He really didn't care, as long as he could kill this bastard too.

It was probably long past time he died anyways.

14

Mostly out of curiosity, he asked, "Where's my visor?"

She gave him a sharp look, clearly annoyed with him, and said dismissively, "You haven't made any improvements to the basic design. Don't you think you should have by now?"

"And what makes you think I designed the thing? Really, if the best you can do at this point is insults -"

That's when the lights died.

He heard her chair screech across the floor as she jumped to her feet, and demanded into her radio, "Alvarez, report. What the hell just happened?"

Scott was seized by the sudden urge to laugh. "I told you, Bob -"

""It isn't Bob," she snapped angrily. "He would just walk in, and we'd have no memory of what happened. It's what a reality warper is good for. This is something else." She then paused and turned her attention back to her radio. "Damn it, Alvarez, wou-"

The lights came back on, the emergency generator kicking in, and thanks to what Rogue told them on the surface, he knew they were all locked in here until someone entered the correct command code to let them out. Did whoever escape have a command code? Or did they just figure they could get one if they needed one? He would know better if he knew who exactly it was that got loose. He assumed the Sisters, and if so, on the one hand they were screwed, because he was under the impression they didn't plan ahead much. But then again, assuming people were still alive, they could probably terrify a code out of anyone.

Control stared at him, but was talking to her invisible friend. "Alvarez, is the situation under control? Alvarez?" After a moment, she cursed and flicked the mike away from her mouth. "Damn it."

"Don't these things always happen whenever you take Logan captive?" He knew it wasn't Logan, but he wanted to bug her even more.

From the look she gave him, he succeeded. "It isn't Wolverine. Not only is he out of it, he is secured. There is no way he could break out of containment, even if he was conscious." She started to open drawers, look inside them for something. His guess was a weapon.

"Maybe someone got out and freed him."

She snorted derisively, ignoring him completely now as she searched for something. He turned his head to the side, wedging the goggles between his face and the chair, and started to do his best to work the damn things off. "We aren't so stupid as to put you within easy reach of each other either. Unlike you people, we're not a collective gaggle of idiots."

Perfect, just what he needed to know.

Even though he knew he was straining neck muscles and would feel it later, the goggles started to slip. Their awkward heaviness actually helped him once he shifted them to a certain point. "Actually, you're worse than idiots," Scott noted. "You should have let us go."

He saw her straighten up out of the corner of his eye, holding something (surely a weapon), but he had to quickly close his eyes as the goggles slid free, although he kept his head turned so she couldn't see directly what he had done . "Cyclops, what -"

"My name is Scott," he interrupted. "And I'm done here." With that, he faced her and opened his eyes.

The unmodulated blasts of energy from his eyes hit her hard enough to rip her off her feet and send her crashing through the wall, which crumbled like drywall. He closed his eyes as walls continued to collapse, fragment and fall with shudders and booms, and pieces of the ceiling started to pelt down in response. He hadn't hit a retaining wall, so he figured he was lucky, but if the structure continued to lose integrity, he could accidentally kill someone. Maybe he'd kept his eyes open too long.

He braced himself, ready to do what he had to do. He already picked an arm to sacrifice; he really didn't have a choice if he wanted to get out of this damn chair, but he really didn't like it. Still, he took a deep breath, turned his head towards his left arm, and opened his eyes again.

The pressure was incredible, and he heard as well as felt his arm break instantly, an electric shock of pain that shuddered through his body like a lightning bolt. But, if there was anything to be grateful for, it was a clean break, and the chair dissolved under the torrent like it had been made of graham crackers. He quickly stood to keep from falling on his ass, and while the right arm of the chair was still attached to his arm via the restraint, he was able to lay the remaining part of the chair on the desk and blow it to pieces without breaking his other arm.

He then secured the goggles back on his head and started searching the broken desk for his visor, on the off chance it was there. If he found her later on, and she wasn't in a body cast for the next year and a half, he had to ask her if she felt like an idiot. Just because he wouldn't kill didn't mean he wouldn't hurt her if given the chance.

He found his visor in the bottom drawer, which he had to wrench open, and every single movement made his left arm throb like a toothache. Shit, this was just going to get worse as the night wore on, so the sooner they could get out of here, the better.

He had just put on his visor when he heard rubble shifting behind him, and turned towards the gaping hole in the wall.

"Lose your temper, Boy Scout?" Helga asked, looking around at the damage.

He scowled at her for the nickname. "Don't call me that. Were you the one who killed the power?"

"Yeah. The Sisters have secured the camera control room, and they say that Saddiq and Logan are on this floor. Rogue, Srina, and Marcus are on level three. Whoa, hey, they break your arm?"

"Uh, no, I kind of had to do that to get out. Although, if I knew you were coming, I guess I could have waited." Now he felt like a jackass.

She shrugged. "You may have decked me with a piece of flying wall, so better out than waiting for your princess to rescue you."

Princess? He wasn't even going to ask. "If the Sisters have the control room, is that why we haven't been swarmed by soldiers?"

She stared at him, tail flicking up dust behind her. "Heard of the phrase 'Don't ask, don't tell'?"

Oh Christ. There was no way they could have killed them all … was there? "Just tell me they're locked into their specific rooms."

"Some of 'em are, sure. So, wanna go rescue some people?"

He didn't see why not, as that's what they were here for.

As it turned out, there were some soldiers alive in some of the rooms, and they put up some opposition, but not much, as Scott was quick to take them out with optic blasts, as Helga had a gun and wasn't afraid to use it (it also looked like she wasn't shooting to wound). Saddiq was groggy and strapped down to something that looked distressingly like an operating table, but he seemed otherwise okay. The three of them then went to get Logan.

He was actually several rooms away from where Scott had been held, and the far wall had partly collapsed, burying somebody in a lab coat beneath rubble. They were still breathing, so Scott didn't feel too bad about it. Logan was okay, though, as he was in a tank.

It looked like a human sized aquarium, about seven feet long and four feet high, only filled with a vaguely greenish fluid; Logan was strapped down to the bottom, stripped of everything but his boxers, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. It was creepy to look at, frankly, like it was a special experimental prison for him or an embalming fluid bath, although Helga suspected there was some kind of chemical in the water, like a sedative, to keep him out of it for a while. Each one of limbs was chained down, at the wrists and ankles, and there was a separate wide black strap across the center of his chest, not so much holding him down as keeping him totally immobile.

None of them could figure out how to release him or drain the tank, so Scott simply shot it, collapsing one side, and the water gushed all over the floor, pooling beside the fallen people and the rubble. They were then able to manually undo the restraints, but Logan was still out cold, even though Helga shouted his name at him. "Uh, I think he might be deaf," Scott belatedly pointed out. "Control told me they shattered his eardrums."

"Oh shit." She pulled out a compact radio, and said, "Girls, need you here. You done?"

"We've -"

"-done-"

"-all we-"

"-can do."

"Great. Get your bony asses down here." She put it away, and then looked around, perhaps for a control panel of some sort. There were lots of panels around them, but he had no idea what exactly did what, and flying pieces of wall had damaged or destroyed a third of them - well, a third of the ones they could see. There might have been more buried under the broken wall.

"He's … he's going to heal, yes?" Saddiq asked nervously, looking like he wanted to do something but didn't know what.

"Oh yeah," Helga proclaimed like the voice of authority. "He's healed from worse."

Saddiq accepted that with a nod - whether it was cultural or just a side effect of his training, unlike most teenagers, he always listened to his elders - but he glanced around them with incredible trepidation. "What were they going to do to him?"

There were surgical instruments and what looked like power tools scattered across the floor, scattered by flying debris. Scott was honestly surprised the debris hadn't shattered the tank, but then again, even he found it difficult to break with his optic blasts. It was shatterproof glass, or high impact glass composite, something he wasn't terribly familiar with. "I don't know. But considering what they've done in the past …" He didn't finish the sentence; he didn't have to.

Helga had been busy pulling a lab coat off someone and tearing it up (he didn't ask; he knew better), so he was surprised when she came over to him with a crudely fashioned sling. "C'mon man, let's get that broken wing taken care of." Seeing the look on his face, she frowned at him. "Hey, I've had a broken arm before, and I know it fuckin' hurts, so don't be a big baby about it."

He acquiesced, not dignifying that "big baby" remark with a comment. But he did wince as she helped him fit his left arm into the sling, and even though she was surprisingly gentle about it, he had to blink back tears of pain. His arm felt hot and pulsing, like it was throbbing with every beat of his heart, and he was surprised he couldn't see it actually happening.

The Sisters came in, looking so exceedingly cheerful it seemed obscene, like a tasteless joke, and asked, "What -"

"-do-"

"-you need us-"

"-for?"

Helga pointed down at the wet and insensate Logan. "Pick him up. We're hitting the road."

Made sense really. Logan was heavier than your average person (all that metal), and the Sisters had that vampire strength going for them, so they could probably handle him better than any of them, especially since he now had a broken arm.

"How-"

"-exactly-" the Sisters asked, as they went over to Logan, and on some secret signal grabbed opposite arms and hauled him up to his feet as if he were conscious, wrapping the arms around their shoulders to keep him propped upright between them.

"-since the-"

"-elevators are-"

"-locked down from-"

"-the third level."

"They are? Shit." Helga scratched her head, then pointed at him. "Can you shoot a hole in the ceiling?"

Scott just stared at her. "Why would I want to do that?"

"We-"

"-can-"

"-jump up-"

"-there and-"

"-unlock the elevators-"

"-as well as-"

"-secure the level."

"Oh, right, the jumping thing." He didn't know how vampires did that, nor did he want to know why, as he preferred to sleep at night. "But I don't want you just slaughtering everyone up there, okay?"

They looked at him with those blank eyes and empty smiles, and he wondered how they ever perfected that look if they couldn't see their reflection in a mirror. But they did have a reflection of sorts in each other, didn't they? Wow, the more he thought about it, the creepier they got. "We-"

"-won't-"

"-we're full-"

"-anyways."

Okay, that was both more than he needed to know, and an answer to the question of where everyone had disappeared to. Maybe it explained why Logan wanted demons on the mission, and he knew he should be grateful to them for doing all this work, but he still felt the need to kick Logan's butt over this later on.

* * *

To both spare him the burden and keep Logan clear of debris, once the Sisters had picked out an "ideal" spot in the ceiling of the main hallway, Saddiq and Helga took Logan, propping him between them, even though Saddiq looked like he was really struggling with his half of the burden but wasn't about to admit it. It was actually mildly alarming how out of it Logan was; his whole body was ludicrously limp, his chin sagging down to his chest. Helga was probably right about the drugs in the water, or that pulse really did scramble his head, big time.

Belatedly, he remembered the sonic pulse that knocked them all out in the first place, but Helga told him the soldier she had "corralled" told her that the system was so new it wasn't connected to the emergency generation system, so until main power was restored, they couldn't use it. Helga was pretty certain they wouldn't be repairing main power any time soon, making him wonder what she did to it. And where was that soldier?

Scott braced himself and shot a short, powerful burst at the ceiling, at a slight angle so it all didn't collapse on top of him, and still he had to back up to avoid some falling debris. This didn't stop the Sisters, who immediately jumped up the new, gaping hole and clamored onto the third floor with a speed and agility that was honestly supernatural.

Shortly afterward, the screaming started.

Men who screamed and shouted, followed by staccato bursts of gunfire, sending some bullets smashing through the floor (no one was hit, but it was a near thing). He shouted up to the Sisters "What did I say?", but he couldn't even hear himself over the explosive gunfire and a truly odd noise that kind of sounded like the roar of a lion or some other big cat. Was that a vampire noise? Freaky.

Someone thudded down near the hole so hard that pieces of the ceiling came loose and fell, but the guy didn't fall through, which was lucky for him. Or maybe not, as that meant he was stuck up there with the Sisters. It sounded like they were fighting their way through the level with a speed and brutality that Attila the Hun would envy, and if the bullets were slowing them down, he couldn't tell.

Then everything went deathly quiet, and for some reason that struck him as worse than all the screaming. He shared some speculative, nervous glances with Saddiq, but Helga seem unconcerned to the point of boredom, suggesting she was accustomed to working with vampires in general or the Sisters in particular.

The elevator at the end of the hall hummed to life, making him jump, and he aimed in that direction and braced himself, in case this was the rallying party they were waiting for. But the doors slid open to reveal an empty lift with a broken roof, and he knew then that Sisters had gained control of something up there.

"They are very ... effective," Saddiq noted with a great deal of wariness. He might have admired their ability to get things done, but it seemed obvious he never wanted to be alone in a room with them, impenetrable skin or not.

"I still don't like them," Scott muttered to Helga.

She just shrugged with one shoulder, as best she could without sending Logan collapsing to the floor. "No one really does, but that's cool with them. They'd rather be feared than admired any day of the week."

Like a dictator? He didn't ask, as it was one of those things he felt better off not knowing for certain.

As they piled in and waited to get taken up to the third floor, he wondered if they had a command code. But did it matter? If worse came to worst, he could probably blast a hole in a wall not covered by a blast shield.

Now he had figured out why Logan wanted him along.

* * *

He was poisoned.

Either that, or the raw energy of the Senior Partners was toxic in some way, because Angel could feel something burning through his blood like acid, making it boil in his veins. It was making his muscles painfully contract, causing him to curl up in a fetal ball on the floor and fight the urge to retch. It was like he was on fire on the inside, and it was spreading to what organs he had left.

The worst part was the Partner was enjoying it, and yet still he yawned, as if his agony was boring him to tears. He didn't care how much it hurt, he was going to kill this bastard.

"You poor thing," the Partner said, his voice dripping with condescension. "I bet you thought you'd die in a blaze of glory, didn't you? Funny how life never works out the way we ..."

Angel glanced up at him through a red glaze of pain, and saw the Partner scowling violently at the doors of the banquet hall. "Oh, you brazen little fucker," he snarled, going down a step before the doors burst open wide.

Bob had arrived.

He stood there looking like his usual self - leather pants, biker boots, obnoxious t-shirt (what did _'Think testicles' _mean? Did he really want to know?)- but his eyes had turned a complete and glowing bright blue. "Buzz baby," he said, all mock casualness and Australian bluster. "Whatever did you do to my date?"

Angel didn't know if he was referring to him or Yasha, and frankly he didn't want to know. The partner made a growling noise, and snapped, "You're an idiot. I told you I would obliterate you if you set foot in my realm. I hope you're happy."

He barely twitched a hand and Bob went flying out the doors, as limp and weightless as a rag doll. The Partner then huffed a disgusted sigh through his nose, and turned back up the steps, muttering to himself. "Imbecile god. No wonder the Powers kicked him out. He's too stu -"

The Partner froze as if shocked, and Angel knew why. Even through this hideous, burning fire in his veins, he could feel the sudden swirl of power, something so immense that it raised the hair on his arms, on the back of his neck. A charge so great it was like the power of the sun had been condensed and distilled right in this room.

Bob came back. Different this time.

He was not walking, not in a conventional sense, as he was about five inches off the ground. The blue fire wasn't just in his eyes this time but bleeding out from them, little tendrils in the air, and his veins glowed blue beneath the skin of his face and exposed arms like a macabre set of tattoos. His torso was also gone, or at least obscured by bright blue energy that approximated the shape of his chest. "Right," he said, his voice an odd amalgam of false camaraderie and otherworldly intensity. "Let's try this again. How stupid do you think I am, Buzz?"

The Partner he called Buzz had turned all his attention to him, and Angel could only see his back, but he bet he was trying to throw some mojo against Bob - mojo that didn't appear to be working in the least. When "Buzz" lowered his left hand to his side, Angel could see black fire dripping from his hand like he had cut a vein. "What kind of fucking trick is this?"

Angel realized this was his chance. Buzz was completely ignoring him, and exposing his back to him even though he was only a few feet away. But here was the million dollar question: could he even stand up? What part of his body wasn't in burning agony was in fact in fact numb as death, but he struggled to shove himself up to his knees, gritting his teeth against the black waves of pain.

"No trick, Buzz. You know, the bad guy too arrogant to notice the patently obvious is a cliché, but is a cliché because it's so bleedin' common. You were so convinced by your own superiority that you couldn't see you were totally buggered. You honestly thought I was asking for Angel back just for myself?" He scoffed and shook his head. "And you call _me_ an idiot?"

"You're full of shit, Bob. You're the god of liars."

Angel managed to shove himself to all fours, but had to pause and shudder, swallowing back bile that burned like acid. He wasn't sure he could stand up straight without losing consciousness, so he was going to only have one shot at this. He had to make it good - and fast.

"Hard as it is for you to believe, my people do occasionally ask me to do things for them, Buzz, and they told me to bring Angel back. I gave you the chance to do it the easy way, but you didn't take it. You can stop tryin' to smite me, by the way; it ain't gonna happen."

"You are _not_ stronger than me."

"You're right, I'm not. But I have the power of my people behind me. One Ahrim - I mean Partner - against all of the Powers That Be? Do you really think you have a chance?"

Angel struggled to his feet, his knees threatening to buckle, legs trembling. He was doubled over, and relatively certain he couldn't straighten up. Damn it!

"You kill me, and you will have declared war on my people. They will tear your realms to shreds."

"Right. See, that's why the Powers came to me. They always drop their shit jobs on me, and they wanted me to find a way to do you in that they can't be held responsible for, and I'm the one with the connections to the old gods. They generally like me 'cause the Powers hate me. And that's where Ammit comes in."

"She can't kill me." The slightest change in octave suggested he wasn't so sure about that.

"Oh? What does her name mean, Buzz? "Devouress of the dead". Besides her role as slayer of the gods, she judged; she determined the worthiness of each soul, of each power, and weighed whether they went on in the cycle, or to a heaven of their own design, or a hell of their own making, or to nothing at all. She had tools that helped her do this before she hung it all up. Do you think you could stand up to being judged?"

So that's what he had up his sleeve. Not a blessed knife, but an actual weapon of the gods; no wonder it burned so much. He slowly straightened up, and had to swallow back a scream.

"You wouldn't dare," Buzz spat.

"You're right, I wouldn't. Judging should be left up to your victims. Or, in this case, victim."

Bob had showed his hand, and Buzz seemed to stiffen in understanding, but far too late. Not trusting himself to take a step, Angel lunged at Buzz's back with the knife firmly held in both hands. He didn't even need to aim; he'd been fighting vampires so long that he could find the heart of any humanoid blindfolded.

The knife plunged through his back like he was made of nothing but marrow, sliding through his ribs like butter, the heat flaring up the hilt so quickly Angel was sure he lost several layers of skin off the palms of his hands. But he hardly had time to notice before he was hit with something like an explosive shockwave, sending him flying backwards into a cold stone wall, hard enough that he was sure he heard something crack, but even all this new pain wasn't enough to knock the consciousness out of him.

Buzz was motionless where he stood, arched painfully as if he was frozen in the act of reaching for the knife in his back. Black energy swirled around him like a dust devil, bleeding out from the knife itself, becoming larger and denser as it orbited him, starting to bury him in a flood of his own energy. "I wonder where you'll go," Bob said, shouting over the roar of the energy, which sounded uncannily like a scream slowed down and drawn out. "Oh, wait, no I don't. Enjoy Phlegethon, or whatever she calls it, you evil old fuck."

Buzz disappeared with a rising scream and a final flare of black fire, leaving behind an eerie silence that seemed to echo through the bejeweled room. Angel tried to move, but found the ability far beyond him now; he'd spent his last just getting to his feet. He felt simultaneously hot and cold, freezing where the poison raging in his blood had yet to travel, and he felt strangely fragile and evanescent, a ghost in the process of fading away to oblivion. He could almost feel the demon in him clawing at his ribcage, screaming in abject rage, because it knew what was happening, and it didn't want to go like this. At least a demon that died fighting was doing what it was meant to do; to just let your life bleed away was not only undignified, but insulting. If he could have smiled, he would have. _Choke on it, you bastard, _he thought, almost gleeful at the idea that Angelus would die like this. Not even in the mercifully brief explosion of ash, but like a small fire dying, ultimately snuffing itself out.

But he was dying too. Maybe it wasn't such a high price to pay as long as he took his lesser half with him.

Bob was there, he felt the energy he was giving off before he even dropped down beside him - in a whole body again, seemingly walking on the floor - and his hands were warm on his face as he turned his head up to look at him. "No pain, Angel," he said, and just like that it was gone; the burning just stopped. But he still felt like he was only half here, his life falling away like sand down the drain. Even Bob's face was out of focus and strangely distant, only the dots of blue truly distinguishable.

He wanted to ask him why he - they - had bothered to come back for him, but he couldn't talk; it took energy he no longer had. Even the blood in his mouth tasted old. "My people aren't great at keeping their word," Bob said, his voice strangely clear. Maybe he wasn't talking at all. "But I was gonna make 'em. You have paid in full. I want you to remember that you did it, that you won. Can you?"

Did that make sense? He wasn't sure it did. They were words, strung together in a sequence, but he wasn't sure what they meant all together like that. "Look into my eyes, Angel," Bob commanded, and even though he didn't think he could focus, there was no way to disobey his orders.

He did as he asked, and saw nothing but blue, a bright, rich cobalt that looked like it should have burned, but didn't. It seemed to envelop him, wash over him like a tide, and he was more than happy to sink into it and drown.


	9. Part 9

15

That was a less than fun thing she was never ever going to do again.

Srina found the time after Helga and company sprung her kind of vague and blurry around the edges; she felt like Captain Morgan had come to visit several times over. She assumed she was drugged, but boy, kind of a fun drug.

Getting out was a colorful smear; she only sobered up when the cool air of the outside hit her, and not that much. She had a vague awareness of Scott just collapsing a wall because he was pissed off with these people, and she couldn't blame him. She was only truly capable of speech when they discussed the transportation problem they had.

Helga had to get the Sisters back to L.A. before sunrise - something about a teleport - and she said she could take care of the motorcycle, since no one could drive it (he didn't even let Rogue volunteer). Logan was still so out it was like he was dead. And it was probably a good thing he was out, as Marcus - still a little woozy but otherwise okay - was carrying Logan over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. He looked like he was sweating a bit under the strain of Logan's weight in spite of all of his impressive muscles, but wouldn't share the burden; it was the first curious thing she noted.

Marcus said he could drive, but he couldn't take everyone, especially now that Logan would be taking up an entire row of seats. Scott decided to take one of the all terrain vehicles used by these sheep fuckers, but his broken arm was obviously hurting too much for him to use. Saddiq could drive, though, so he was going to get his chance. The groups broke up into Helga and the Sisters (and the bike), Scott, Rogue, and Saddiq, and her, Marcus, and Logan. They hadn't freed anyone; according to Helga, they were the only people held there. Scott figured it could mean one of several things: this outpost wasn't used or little used for that purpose; it had been cleared out; it was a trap. Marcus argued that there was no way it was a trap, especially since it didn't come close to holding them for long. But there was no time to argue now, so it was pretty much tacitly decided that they could all wait until later.

Marcus seemed to be sobering up fast, which bode well for his driving, and once he got Logan laid out in the back, she asked him how he managed it, as she was still pleasantly lightheaded. "I'm highly toxic," he said, digging out a spare key hidden behind a fake read out on the dashboard. "My system can break down drugs and poisons pretty fast. Not as fast as Logan, but fast enough."

"I thought you just had poison under your fingernails."

"That's where it's most concentrated, yeah, but I have trace amounts in other body fluids."

"Really?" For some reason, that almost struck her as funny. "What about sex? I mean, can you …"

"Why do you think I use condoms?"

Okay, yeah, she didn't want to think about that anymore. But did it mean his blood could be used as a weapon, if there was enough of it? Or maybe some kind of poison antidote?

Bloody hell, she was flying.

It was possible she nodded off during the drive; she honestly had no idea, and the fact that Marc decided to play some extremely ambient techno - the type that was mellow and sounded a bit like movie background music - helped guarantee that she felt like she was almost constantly slipping in and out of sleep. The music ebbed and flowed, pulling her down and washing her back again, and she found herself longing for something that would make it easier to keep track of things: aggressive rap, perhaps, or screaming hair metal. Anything but audio valium.

Marc stopped at a cheap motel over the Minnesota border, figuring they all needed the rest, and besides, he didn't want to keep moving until he was sure Logan was okay (curiosity number two). He was still dead to the world, although she knew he was still breathing, as she had checked.

Marc got them room under phony names, and carried Logan into the room that she and him would be sharing, making her wonder if anyone had seen him do this, and, if so, what they must think. Hopefully they'd think he just passed out, and they weren't dragging a corpse in here.

Marc went away for a while, he said he had to go get something, and she just closed the blinds and crawled onto the bed beside Logan, giving him the slightest shove. "Hey, you usually sleep on the left, you bastard," she chided, giving him a shove, hoping that would wake him up. It didn't. He looked cold in just his boxers, so she pulled up the homely beige, pink, and green rose patterned coverlet and put it over him, figuring the sheer itchiness of it just might wake him up.

Despite the traffic noise - they were near an off ramp - she must have dozed off a bit, because the next she knew was startled awake by Marc's return. He'd been shopping, and brought them a bag of food, which was mainly a six pack of beer, bottled ice tea, and a bag of crisps (well, she could live with that), and he also bought Logan some clothes, so he could have something to wear when he got up. "Nothing special," he claimed, setting the bags down on the lone armchair. "I just figured a pissed off guy in boxer shorts would get the cops called on him sooner rather than later." Put that way, it sounded reasonable.

But curiosity got the best of her, and she looked through the bag. Marc had gone somewhere reasonably tasteful, and bought some black jeans (had she ever seen Logan in black jeans?), a jade green seamless t-shirt (gorgeous color; she bet it would look really good on him, with his skin tone), and some socks and leather boots. After taking a moment to admire Marc's sense of style - and bugger her stupid if he didn't have better taste than hers - she found herself wondering how he knew Logan's sizes. Even she didn't know Logan's sizes. It could have been an educated guess, they were both big guys who could have been roughly the same size, but she felt it was more proof just the same, yet another curious thing.

Was Marc in love with Logan? If not, he was terribly fond of him. "Is that why you're still unconscious?" She said, poking him in the side. "Avoidance?" It would explain a lot. Since when had he ever been out this long? Well, that time he almost bled to death.

Logan might have been a man, but he still must have known or at least had some inkling that Marc felt that way. But they were both macho guys, so maybe Logan pretended not to notice, and Marc pretended he didn't care about him, thereby insuring a nice, solid friendship without any awkwardness. And who was she to upset that delicate balance by asking about it? But she knew if Marc had been a woman, or if Logan had been bi, she might have felt a pang of jealousy.

She was trying to figure out if it was even within the realm of possibility that they could take Logan to a hospital when she felt him jolt, and she looked over to see his eyes were now wide open, and he was staring up at the ceiling. "Hon?" she asked, as he didn't look like he was blinking.

Finally he did, and rubbed his eyes. "What's wrong with me? I feel fucking weird."

"Join the club. I think they dosed us with something heavy duty."

He sat up with a groan, dry washing his face. "Where the hell are we?"

"Calico Cat Motel in Podunk, Minnesota."

"Uh huh. What happened?"

She gave him the shorthand version of it, which really wasn't appreciably shorter than the so-called long version. They escaped, and there was little else to it. He listened, and then said, "This is some kinda telepathic hallucination, isn't it?"

"If it is, it's a really poor one. So my guess is no. Besides, don't you have energy in your head?"

"Yeah, I think so, but there could be a way around it."

"Well … maybe, but really, this is real."

"You'd have to say that."

She scowled at him. "Does this feel fake to you?" She gave him a backhand smack across the upper arm, aiming for a spot without a bone close to the surface, but he shifted at the last second and she caught his shoulder, her knuckles connecting solidly with a bone. "Oh bloody fuck!" She shouted, grabbing her hand as a small but palpable shock of pain shot through her hand and down her arm.

He quickly turned to her, taking her hands so he could look at the injured one. "What the fuck did you do that for?" he asked, sounding equally alarmed and annoyed.

"To show you what a fucking asshole you're being," she said, as he gently pried her hands apart and had a look at her injured one. "Is it my fault you're a metal man?"

"I'm not a metal man," he protested, but his voice faded in embarrassment. "I'm just … it's just my skeleton." He gently felt around her two red knuckles with his thumbs. "Doesn't feel like you broke anything."

"Good. Now do you think this is all telepathic illusions?"

He grimaced, and she was glad he felt like a dick. "No. Does this place have an ice machine?"

"I think so, a couple doors down."

"I'll go get some for your hand." He started sliding off the bed, then stopped and looked down at his bare legs. "Where are my clothes?"

"They took 'em. But Marc bought you some new ones."

He grunted in response, a sort of semi-verbal "figures". Yeah, he knew. "Why'd they take 'em?"

She scrubbed a hand through her hair with her good hand. "Well, Helga said they found you in a tank."

"A tank?"

"Yeah, like a … well, an aquarium, but bigger, and with no fish. A tank."

He suddenly looked alarmed. "One filled with water?"

She was forced to shrug. "I wasn't there, they just told me. Would've been funny if it was filled with gelatin, though."

"Did they tell you what they were doing to me?"

"No, they had no idea." She hesitated before she asked, "Do you have any idea what they might have been doing to you?"

He stared at her a moment, as if he didn't understand what she was asking, and then he looked away, glancing down at the brown carpet as if he just noticed how astoundingly ugly it was. "No, not at all," he muttered, shoving himself off the bed and heading into the bathroom.

She didn't know what was more frightening: the fact that he was lying, or the fact that the idea scared him so much he had to go hide for a minute.

* * *

By default, he was left to talk to Home Base, as Control was in no shape to do it, and everyone else above him in the chain of command was incapacitated or dead. That part would be the hardest to break to Home Base. 

But he did his best, breaking down the salient points of Operation Breakwater and the general outcome. "Loss of life was significantly higher than projections," he pointed out, looking at the data on his screen. "The women were unexpected variables, and seemed to have no compunction about killing, which they did extremely well."

"The women? Which ones?"

"Uh, two that we believe to be NMHOUs, and another we believe to be severely mutated. They were unanticipated, and do not - as far as we can tell - reside at Xavier's. The green woman may have some association with the mutant called Bob."

"How I hate that name now. Was the implanting successful?"

He had to scroll through the screens, and grimaced at the idea of breaking even more bad news. "Inconclusive. Cyclops did more structural damage to the base than anticipated, and the women cut the power at an inopportune time, when the systems were still being backed up. We may be able to recover the data, but we don't have the personnel at the moment."

"Then why did you trigger the escape so early?"

"We didn't. The women escaped on their own, ahead of schedule. We just didn't factor enough of the unknown into our equations, nor did we anticipate that Cyclops would allow Wolverine to bring in hired killers on this mission." Those three women must have been assassins, highly trained and extremely skilled; there was no other way to explain how they ripped through so many personnel so quickly. And how had several people bled death through tiny holes in the neck? There wasn't even any blood on the floor. Now that was a professional at work.

Home Base sighed audibly, and he thought he heard the slap of a folder on a desktop. "Well, I guess we'll know about the results soon enough."

"Yeah," he agreed hoping that he could end this conversation before he started discussing who was to blame. And whether or not they'd all live to regret it.

* * *

He was walking through the large, empty halls of Xavier's, aware somewhere in the back of his mind that he was dreaming. He knew that was the case when the hall came to an end at a huge window wall, looking out on some overgrown, tropical forest that seemed to have spread over the grounds like a consumptive fungus. What the hell was this? 

Scott approached the wall, wondering what this was supposed to mean symbolically, when sudden movement behind the glass and somewhere among the verdant growth made him jump. And his heart continued to skip beats as he realized he was face to face with Jean. "Scott, you have to help me," she hissed, her voice barely a whisper between the panes of glass.

"What?" It was a question mostly of disbelief. But she looked genuinely frightened, her eyes wide and sweat popping out on her forehead, making red strands of her hair cling to her face like grasping vines.

"They're trying to kill me," she said, looking around as if she expected immediate attack. "You have to -"

Suddenly she was ripped away from the window by an unseen hand, and yanked screaming through the suffocating tangle of trees and lianas. He was momentarily stunned into paralysis, but he snapped out of it and backed up, putting a hand to his visor ...

... and nothing happened. He meant to shoot the window, break it, so he could go after Jean, but nothing was happening. Was the shutter stuck? He ripped it off and faced the window, eyes unprotected ... and still nothing. What the hell..?

"No," he shouted, figuring he had normal eyes again, like what Jean had given him before. He looked around frantically for something he could break the window with, but it started to disappear quickly, wood paneling growing over it like a sudden frost, window becoming wall.

"There's nothing you can do," Bob said behind him.

Scott pivoted on his heels, furious to find him here, in his mind of all places. "What?"

He held his hands open in what might have been a gesture of apology. "She's dangerous, you know that. I was hoping there'd be some other way, but now ... "

"But now what you fucking asshole?"

Bob hardly reacted to the words, his absurdly handsome face a mask of inscrutability. Only his eyes, electric blue and inhuman, gave any hint that he had heard him. "She's feeding the enemy now. We have to end it before things get out of control."

"End what?" He started forward, prepared to deck him if he had to, but it was like he ran into an invisible forcefield, power like static electricity sliding over his skin and pushing him back. He couldn't get within a meter of him. "What the hell do you mean she's feeding the enemy? Are you going to kill her, Bob?"

Again, that empty gesture of open hands, something that should have meant something, but didn't. "We do what we have to do. It's for the good of humanity."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. This had to be a nightmare, right? It couldn't be real. "This is Jean we're talking about. Killing anyone isn't good for the sake of humanity, and certainly not her."

"This is god business; you have no place here," he claimed, and his eyes glowed so blue it was painful.

Scott jolted awake, the bright blue light still lingering in his mind. He sat up, gasping for breath, cold sweat trickling down his face, and tried to convince himself it was a dream. It was, wasn't it?

What if it wasn't?

He spent the next hour trying to figure out where the nightmare ended, and where reality began.

* * *

Epilogue

When he woke up feeling cold, hard stone beneath his back, he knew something was wrong.

He opened his eyes to find himself in a very narrow alley, barely a man's arm span wide, lined with cobblestones before giving way to uneven pavement. There were old tin garbage cans, battered and bent in, overflowing with vegetable peelings just starting to grow rancid. On the other end of the alley people walked by on the street, never looking in his direction or at the alley in particular.

He used the brick wall to help him get to his feet, and wondered why he was feeling so woozy. Was he mugged or something? And he was cold; the clothes he wore seemed thin for this level of shade and wind chill.

He ran a hand through his hair, expecting to find blood, but found none. Maybe he wasn't mugged? Maybe he just had too much to drink last night ..? For some reason, that sounded like a good possibility, even though he couldn't remember drinking. Actually, he couldn't remember anything, come to think of it.

He started out of the alley, onto the paved sidewalk lining the street, when he saw the golden glare of the sun and instantly recoiled. Something in him told him he had to avoid the sun because ... because ... well, because why? He couldn't remember that either, and the more he stood shivering in the shade, the more stupid and chickenshit it seemed.

He stepped out onto the street, braced for ... well, something ... but nothing happened, except a lanky teenage boy with a nose ring almost collided with him. "Watch where yer goin', gobshite," he said, his voice thick with an accent that seemed unusual ... but familiar.

Walking along the street, unsure where he was going, he looked around at the cars driving by, the old style brick and mortar buildings beside newer fashioned ones of glass and steel, and realized he knew this place. He wasn't sure how he knew it, of course, but it was strangely comforting.

His walking led him to a bridge overlooking a ribbon of greyish blue water, and when he stepped directly into a shaft of sun, he was surprised at how warm and comforting it was. He had been afraid of this? Why was he ever afraid of this?

There was an old man in a heavy blue overcoat and a grey fisherman's cap watching a boat on the water, and he turned to look at him curiously. "Y'all right lad?" He asked, with much the same accent that boy had. "Look a bit lost."

"I, uh -" he began, slightly startled by his own voice. Hey, he had an accent too! Wasn't as heavy as the man's, though. "I think I am, in a way. Where am I? I mean, what city is this?"

The old man's blue eyes sparkled with amusement, a ragged grin breaking out on his weathered face. "Got in your cups last night, eh? This is Dublin. That where yer supposed ta be?"

Dublin? It took him a moment to place the name, but he did. Dublin, Ireland - yes, he knew it! "Yeah, I think so," he agreed, trying to chuckle and make it a joke. Then he said a phrase that just popped into his mind. "Too much Guinness."

The old man chuckled, and he figured that had been the right thing to say. "That'll do it to ya. Might want to pace yourself next time."

An old woman, not far from them, shouted, "Henry, I'm leaving!"

The old man sighed, and said, "Be careful, son." He then added, in a conspiratorial whisper, added, "Never get so drunk you wind up married to the first biddy that grabs ya." He then winked and turned away, chuckling at his own joke as he walked over to the old woman in the camelhair coat.

Did that make sense? Maybe ... maybe not. He wasn't sure just yet.

He just stood there, watching the sun sparkle like diamonds on the top of the water, and tried to recall his name. Angel? No, that wasn't right - why had he thought that?

Liam. His name was Liam.

With that realization came a sudden, unexpected feeling of bliss. It was so intense he felt like laughing. He was Liam and he was home, and he had no idea why that was so important, but it felt like some kind of triumph, some sort of victory.

How much had he had to drink last night?

He closed his eyes and turned his face towards the sun, letting it warm him as he breathed in the salt air. This felt good, unbelievably so, as if he'd been trapped underground for hundreds of year and just finally dug his way to the surface.

There were gaps in his mind - he knew this - but he also knew that it didn't matter. He was home now, and he would find what he needed; he would find a way to make this work.

He knew all he needed to know: his name was Liam, and he had won.

* * *

The End(Well, until the next one…) 


End file.
